Her Royal Lover: A Novel — page 125: what you’re looking at

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

HER ROYAL LOVER. 117 Some moments after, all the company having assembled, they set out. There could never have been a more charming day chosen. The sky without a cloud was of an intense blue; the atmosphere, not too warm, was embalmed with the perfume which exhaled from the blossoming trees. “How good it would be to live,” thought the sad Najeska Ivanowna, “if, like the stings of gnats, so many cruel cares were not there to constantly torment you during this short life! Ever since the assassination, that rigid corpse was before her eyes. She appealed loudly to every distraction that was able to deliver her from this besetting vision. At the Lenisen-Waldchen everybody alighted from the carriage. Inthe middle of the woods was a large sheet of water upon which swans and wild ducks majestically glided, wrestling with grace and rapidity with the boatmen who, by the means of some white oars, were riding in elegant little wher- ries the amateurs of navigation. All around this pond a green and tufted grass was crowing; flexible weeping willows and many other trees cast their lengthened shadows in the mirror of the water, as smooth as glass. The light skiffs were all anchored in a little bay situated in the middle of the pond. “If we could have a boat-ride!” suddenly cried the oldest betrothed couple. The Princess Aline and the Grand Duke Ivan Alexandrowitch remained silent, this proposition not appearing to absolutely enrapture them; but the king seized the ball at the bound, _ «That would be charming, Agusta,” said he to his GEomicbooks:.com