Her Royal Lover: A Novel — page 56: what you’re looking at

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

48 HER ROYAL LOVER. them, Waldemar was endeavoring by all the force of his eloquence to rekindle under the lash of his impetuous desires, the tenderness which he had formerly created in the heart of this woman. But more unskillful than intelligent, he did not perceive that in tormenting this choice nature he bruised a proud and tender heart, that gentleness and prayers might perhaps effect, but that menaces, reproaches and compulsion would render invulnerable. Najeska Ivanowna lashed nervously the leaves of the trees which surrounded her, while listening to Waldemar, whose conversation awakened in her the oloomy remembrance of the time when her greatest, her only happiness was to be near him—him—the husband of her choice. Mineleko did not comprehend that which was passing in her heart; he took for a guilty confusion the regards which she averted from the young man. She loved !—but who?—this one, or the king? During the time that the ambassador was observ- ing everything, the red flower that the princess wore in her buttonhole became unfastened and was just falling to the ground. The young man dis- mounted from his horse, feverishly, picked up the carnation already half-faded by the warmth of the young woman’s body, and covered its petals with passionate kisses; then, showing Najeska Ivanowna this precious souvenir, he put it religiously in his pocket-book, probably not without uttering some commonplace phrase. “What! she did not snatch from this man the flower which she ought not to let him retain at any price? Then, he pleased her! Ah! infernal co- Gomichooks com