Her Royal Lover: A Novel — page 214: what you’re looking at

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

206 HER ROYAL LOVER. thus, seemed to conceal at her pleasure charms which she permitted you to divine. What tortures for Walpurga, obliged to accom- pany the betrothed princess. On all her excursions the poor young girl was thinking more of her hand- some Conrad, whom she so desperately loved. But the intensity of her affections did not augment the chances of her marriage. Her father and mother, notwithstanding the disgrace of their son, remained insensible and implacable. Walpurga should never belong to a man, except one having rank in the nobility,whereas the ennoblement on which Madame Haller and her son counted so much did not ad- vance. As we have already remarked, Walpurga had confided in the two young princesses; she had re- lated to them her whole love romance, with its hopes and its fears. The young confidantes had interested themselves in it, and had very often spoken of it to their father. But Charles Ferdinand remained inexorable. What reason had he to ennoble the Haller family? The little countess was certainly charming, and Conrad was a handsome cavalier; but that was not enough. “Is it sufficient that a girl of proud lineage may be desperately smitten with a commoner, in order that this commoner may obtain titles which are owed only to birth or excep- tional merits?” the grim ministers, all of them old and more or less egotistical, had responded to his majesty when he deigned to submit the question to them. The unusual circumstances which had just har- assed the life of Madame de Mineleko had hin- dered Walpurga from seeing much of her, and also from becoming intimate enough with her to ask her Gomicbooks.com