Her Royal Lover: A Novel — page 349: what you’re looking at

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

* HER ROYAL LOVER. 341 CHAPTER XLVI. LAST HOURS. Seven months have elapsed since the last events. We are in May. During the preceding March Najeska Ivanowna has become a mother; she has given birth to a sickly little boy; the son of the king. This atom in creation, this blood of her blood she loves with a passion all kneaded with tears, all cemented with pains. The more anguish and tears this poor little being has cost her the more she feels herself attached to it. Born in a condition border- ing on poverty, she will surround it with solicitudes, with delicacies, with luxuries even, that her mater- nal love will know how to procure for it. She loves it with all the regrets that for it alone she experi- . ences at the idea that were it not for the interven- tion of the Empress of Hindostan this birth, almost a shame to-day, would have made the happiness of aking. Of this poor child, born of a love lost as soon as created, she asks pardon for the. abandon- ment of his father, pardon for the life which she has given him, for the joys, for the pleasures of which he is deprived. Poor woman! what does she not suffer, what has she not suffered! Her sick- ness, so tormented by the alternatives which she had to undergo, was painful and burdensome, her accouchment, occurring in such unhappy circum- stances, made her very ill. Several times they had feared as much for the child as for the mother, for Gomichbooks (e(@) m