Her Royal Lover: A Novel — page 274: what you’re looking at

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

266 HER ROYAL LOVER. She uttered this phrase in a commanding tone, as if she was still the Ambassadress of Caucasus; and it was with the carriage of a queen, with the dignity which suited her misfortune, that she passed through this door which she had so joyously opened some hours before. Full of respect and admiration for so many out- rages so courageously supported, the assistants of this painful scene bowed profoundly upon the pas- sage of the princess, who was going forever away from this place, the witness of her triumphs, of her love. Apprehending a desperate resistance, several guards of the palace had been collected in the ante- chamber. “So many men for one woman alone!” said Ma- dame de Mineleko, with a haughty and disdainful bitterness. There was scarcely any light in the corridors, and the immense monumental staircase was filled with shadows which imparted a thrill of terror. Almost absolute silence reigned in the vast feudal chateau, from whence these people, at the com- mands of an old vindictive empress, were chasing this fragile woman so cruelly wounded in her mod- esty, in her wifely dignity and in all her sentiments of feminine delicacy. Down below, a pale and flickering light was as- cending, whose reflections were projected on the staircase, giving to the arabesques of the forged-in balustrade curves and fantastic lines which were delineated like a phantasmagoria upon the wain- scoting of the vast walls. There, immovable and severe in their autiquated frames, appeared the glorious ancestors of Charles Ferdinand XVIII, m Eomicbooks:.co