Her Royal Lover: A Novel — page 152: what you’re looking at

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

144 HER ROYAL LOVER. stop? When will you decide that the measure will be sufficiently filled?” He remained faithful to his fixed idea that the king had come, during the night, to the embassy. Najeska Ivanowna, stunned, terrified, by all these terrible accusations that her husband was accumv- lating upon her, instead of defending herself was silent. What respond could she have made? A\l- though she had been able to speak, would he have believed her? This silence was, for the infuriated husband, irrefutable proof of the culpability of the princess. What fury and revolt passed in the heart of this man, arrived at the paroxysm of madness? Alas! did he ever render an account of it to himself? Furiously mad, he approaches the poor trembling creature: “Wretch! miserable creature of perdition!” he roared, with rage, his whip raised over the head of the young woman. “Ah! not that—not that!” implored she, seeing his menacing gesture. “Not that?” Mineleko hisses, through his closed lips. An intense redness blinds him. In his brain boils the breath of vengeance; his hands are agitated by those nervous contractions which produce tremors, the precursors of crime. A terrible cry has suddenly resounded; the echoes of the forest are moved by it. What has happened? Rapid as lightning. the ambassador’s whip has risen and fallen three times, and has just ignominiously cut the face of Najeska Ivanowna. In this terrible moment, the stricken princess be- lieves she is lost, for she can no longer see, Then, Gomicbooks,. ¢o m