Her Royal Lover: A Novel — page 61: what you’re looking at

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

HER ROYAL LOVER. o3 all the letters of his young fiancee. She had had faith in his pledged word, and here only the other morning he had shown them to her intact—happily before her husband encountered them—these letters in which she had so constantly ridiculed “the” other suitor, Mineleko, and sworn to him—to him, Walde- mar—an eternal love. An imprudence for which she would have to pay dearly, by a whole existence of terror and remorse! The inexperience of the young girl who, with the indiscretion, the confidence of her age, delivers her innocence, her reputation, the happiness of an entire life, to the mercy, to the discretion often of the vainest and most indelicate of men. When she accepted the hand of Mineleko he had royally acquainted her with his jealous and passion- ate character; he had entreated her to refuse his offer if she had ever loved another, and, terrified by the idea of all the consequences that her refusal would involve, moved also by the tenderness of her heart, she was afraid of wounding this man, whom she felt loved her so profoundly, and she concealed the truth from him! Alas! where had this pious he led her; in what a terrible labyrinth does she not find herself, and how can she ever get out of it? One alone of these letters, written to her first fiance and sent by him to her husband, and all is*‘over for- ever with her happiness and with that of her children ! Najeska Ivanowna had entreated Heiligenthal to come and see her as an ordinary visitor, at her customary hour in which she received at the em- bassy. “T will come when you please, only, swear to me that, being with you, no one will disturb our inter- (E(0) mm C ooo) KS (E(0)