Her Royal Lover: A Novel — page 325: what you’re looking at

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

HER ROYAL ILOVER. 317 unconfined, was falling over her pearly shoulders, the lace dressing-gown which enveloped her per- mitted you to see the curves of her beautiful waxen body. She was divinely beautiful, desperately tempting. Still immovable there where Glascha had placed me, she could not at first perceive me. Suddenly, I appeared to her. Frightened at first, she quickly recovered herself, and gave proof of great presence of mind. She did not utter a cry— not the semblance of one. She arose supple and nervous like a panther ready to spring upon its prey. Her indignation was so terrible that I shiv- ered to the marrow of my bones. Approaching me, pale, terrible, in her wrath: “I command you to depart!”—hissed she. “I chase you like a dog as you are, worse than that, like a varlet!” She was so resolved, so quick, and such a fire flashed from her dilated pupils, that she seemed to transform into a flaming sword the infamy of my actions, and to imprint them there upon my brow like an indelible mark. I endeavored to move her, but she wailed always the same words: “Coward! Wretch! Depart! Begone!” She was so beautified in her chaste wrath, that my desires no longer knew any limits; forgetting all, I seized her in my eager arms. Who knows how far the insanity of my passion would have pushed me, but, bounding back- ward like a crouching she-wolf, collecting herself in order to spring upon her prey, she rushed toward the chimney. A Russian cutlass was lying there; she seized it, and, with her frail nervous hand she plunged it violently into me in the first place which presented itself to her blows. I was struck in the shoulder. Although the wound was only a scratch, the pain which I felt drew a cry from me, and the Gomichooks