Her Royal Lover: A Novel — page 303: what you’re looking at

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

HER ROYAL LOVER. 295 “IT am completely overcome by Conrad’s condi- tion.” | “Poor boy! What a ridiculous prejudice separates him from his happiness.” “Ridiculous, indeed. And to think that one can do nothing, absolutely nothing! unless in the end, Walpurga’s family yields, for as to the ennobling, it is no longer to be counted upon.” Haller, with all the sincerity of his frank nature, expressed in the most simple manner and with- out any reservation, correctly the idea that his wife wished to inculcate in him. “What is so horrible,” pursued Madame Haller, “is that Doctor Schlotz says that the anemia which commenced to declare itself scarcely three months ago, grows frightfully worse; all the efforts of the physician remaining impotent to arrest it. Alas! to have but one son—an only son—and to see him thus delivered up to certain death! And Madame Hal- ler, always much affected at the thought of losing her Conrad, purposely exaggerating his malady, wept bitterly. “Come! come, my dear!” Haller endeavored to speak consolingly, “do not abandon thyself to de- spair! Conrad is young; if the Heiligenthal family remain inexorable, ah well! we will force him to travel, and he will forget.” “Oh! as for that, never! thou knowest not Con- rad as I, his mother, know him. His is a profound nature, he will never forget. His heart is given, he will die, if need be, but he will never take it back.” “At his age, my dear, the heart is recalled as easily as it is given!” “Never! never! Ah! if thou hadst seen him, this Eomicbdoo Ss)