Her Royal Lover: A Novel — page 328: what you’re looking at

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

320 HER ROYAL LOVER, ~ the assassin, and if she was ignorant that it was I. I was not long in comprehending that, having heard nothing, only doubtless, a smoothered noise in the corridor, terrified she had remained skut up, be- lieving me caught by her husband and fearing to ageravate the situation by showing herself; thus, knowing nothing positive, she had, like everybody, suspected you—you, rather than I. “If, on the day of the picnic, I attracted your attention to the officiousness of the king with the ambassadress, it was under the impulse of a fero- cious jealousy, but there was also mingled with it a diabolical calculation; the hope of removing from you all idea that l was paying attention to Madame de Mineleko, and to prevent your suspicions on the subject of the nocturnal visitor falling upon me. “The princess had driven me out likeadog. I said to myself that it was because she loved the king. If she repulsed me thus, she should not give herself to another, and I would prevent it at any price! It was in this state of mind, in this ebullition of furious jealousy, that I announced to you the assignation in the Parc-aux-Cerfs. “You see, 1 take my heart from my breast and lay it there, bare; before you, in all its hideousness! Ah! when one is not a hardened, obdurate criminal by profession, no chastisement of the law is equal to the secret torture which gnaws you. Even the powerful pen of Shakespeare, depicting the delirium of Macbeth after the murder of Banquo does not attain to the intensity of the overwhelming sensa- tions alternately of terror andof hope, which make the chills constantly run over you, even to the roots of your hair! One is damned, damned forever! No m = Gomichooks ico