Her Royal Lover: A Novel — page 199: what you’re looking at

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

HER ROYAL LOVER. 191 CHAPTER XXVI. THE DIVORCE. Monsieur de Mineleko, the fifth evening of his ar- rival in the Caucasian capital, and consequently the ninth after his departure from the Thessalian resi- dence, did not receive the customary dispatches in regard to his wife’s health. Some very grave affairs retained him, which annoyed him very much, for his trunks were hardly unstrapped before obliging friends, always eager to propagate bad news, had very privately informed him that the King of Thes- saly had solicited and obtained from his cousin of Caucasus, the recall of his ambassador. They were already even designating his successor. Whatever Mineleko did to learn them, he could not find out the reasons alleged by the Thessalian court! This was not only making him very uneasy, but, for the present, was rendering his return to Thes- saly impossible. His conscience on the alert was tell- ing him the true cause of his ‘disgrace, he believed the situation to be still more grave, for he knew that in Thessaly, where the autocracy is not absolute as in Caucasus, the tribunals were independent of the king. He was saying to himself that, notwithstand- ing the efforts of Charles Ferdinand XVIII, the flower-girls might have spoken in amore positive manner, and the groom have renounced his silence, His majesty would undoubtedly have much trouble to stifle the affair. Onthe other hand, he was ac- quainted with the customs of his country. He knew how, under a pretext of giving vou a change of air, ecomicbooks.com