Her Royal Lover: A Novel — page 277: what you’re looking at

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

HER ROYAL LOVER. 269 young woman, going to conceal far from the world her disgrace and her despair. CHAPTER XXXVII. UNDER THE WEIGHT OF HER CROSS. The post-chaise continued on its way as rapidly as its four horses could bear it. The coppice-wood of the little forest which extended behind the royal palace was quickly traversed. In the distance, al- ready far behind, the immense edifice entirely dark, with its deep moat, its high walls, its turrets of the middle age and its slender spires, was disappearing from the horizon. Now, they were traversing a great sheet of light that the moon was throwing like along white rib- bon, upon the thickly-wooded country which sur- euided the capital of Thessaly. The coachman’s whip re-echoed, almost sinisterly, in the silence of the night; the vehicle dolefully crushed the leaves and the branches with which the morning's storm had strewn the earth. The wind was uttering long sighs. The echo re- verberated in the chain of mountains roundabout. It was night with its train of terrors; it was the soli- tude and the profound darkness of the midst of the countrv. The pebbles seemed to grind their teeth under the carriage wheels. The sigh of the wind ran rapidly through the for- est, which the unconscious traveler was approach- ing in spite of herself. The heavy wheels in passing noisilv, awakened the broods of birds asleep in the branches. The voice of night was arising on all sides. The crooked forms of the high bushes which ¢ ecomicbooks:com