Her Royal Lover: A Novel — page 236: what you’re looking at

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

228 HER ROYAL LOVER. was a little lateral door which, through the halls of the ground floor, gave egress to the residence square. Najerka Ivanowna, accompanied by Monsieur de Brandt, traversed the covered court-yard and the still deserted halls of the ground floor. When Mon- sieur de Brandt opened the little door before which a carriage was waiting for the young woman, such a gust of wind and rain lashed the face of the trembling Najeska Ivanowna that she was cut as if by the blow of a whip. The storm was now at its height; lightning with- out interruption succeeded to hghtning, the thunder precipitated its long and near peals which, like another storm, reverberated echo upon echo, the mountains. whose wooded semicircles inclosed the little capital, had become impotent to protect it against the tempest which, from minute to minute, was augmenting, increasing. The wind from the north was blowing furiously, the tall straight trees of the residence city bent to the earth under the force of the squalls; nothing could resist it. On all sides there was nothing but a sinister cracking similar to that of a ship which, dragging its anchors, is about to break upon an inhospitable coast; the loud roaring voice of the wind was howl- ing in a deafening manner. Fragments of roofs | and chimneys were flving in every direction carried like light feathers. Woe to him who had dared to face this frightful tempest; for if the houses offered but a verv slight security, the streets threatened to become the tomb of those who traversed them. Where now were those fields so flourishing but a moment ago? What had become of this harvest so fertile, the! "Eomicbooks: co '