A Struggle for a Ring — page 282: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

278 AILIE’S PROMISE. a shock to him to find Lady Ethel at Roseneath; it would riot have happened but that he left Gibraltar two months before the time originally named. Lady Ethel had ac- cepted the invitation to Roseneath without the faintest notion that she should see him there; it had been by the purest accident they met. Had Lady Ethel been quite _ wise when she heard that he was expected, she would have started off at once, and so have avoided him; but she did not know the barrier that divided them, and she longed with all her heart to see him again. Lord Carsdale, to do him. justice, was not delighted altogether when he found that Lady Ethel was there; he loved her, and he knew that this love was to be crushed. He said to himself it was unfortunate that she was there; still he could not be rude or abrupt. He knew that it would be better, and she would suffer less, if he went away at once; but then, as he said to himself, he had been away some five years ; 1t would look ill-bred and awkward if he went away again—in fact, he could not doit. He prom- we ised himself, however, that he would be, for all that, most courteous. He was a man of honor—it was not likely that he should do or say anything that would be better left undone. JBefore he had been twenty-four hours with Lady Ethel, he said to himself that it would have been a thousand times better and safer had he never returned. (ee)