A Struggle for a Ring — page 55: what you’re looking at

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

A SHOCKED HUSBAND. 51 CHAPTER VIL. A SHOCKED HUSBAND. A beautiful, light, cheerful room, overlooking the most lively and picturesque part of Paris—the garden of Tuile- ries—a room such as Alice had never seen; all flowers, lace, silks, and gilding. The first moment she entered it her husband smiled to himself, because she looked at the © white carpet, with its crimson roses, as though she were afraid to tread upon it. Had there been any romance about their marriage, this would have been the very room fora bride. Roses lay on the floor and seemed to climb the walls—roses were painted on the door panels, and wherever it was possible for roses to be. , She turned those wondering eyes of hers to her husband. ‘* What a beautiful room, Vivian,” she said, in accents _ of awe. | ‘‘ Beautiful,” he repeated, laughingly. ‘‘Nay, Alice, no room can be beautiful that is not artistic; and this room certainly is not.” ‘‘Not artistic? Why, Vivian, look at the flowers,” she cried. ‘Flowers do not make art,” he said, ‘‘although they make beauty. Wait until you see th: rooms at Roseneath Abbey, Alice—they are beautiful.” ‘“If they are better than this,”’she said, despondently, ‘‘T do not know what I[ shall do in them.” Looking at her it seemed to him, for the first time, how utterly out of place that ‘unformed, ontrained girl would (E(0) mm (C JOO Ss co m