Her Royal Lover: A Novel — page 302: what you’re looking at

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

294 HER ROYAL LOVER. “No, but I will be ever so little his judge.” And Monsieur Haller, who for some years had suffered from the humiliations that his family had received at court, had in his voice an intonation of pride so pronounced that it did not escape his wife. During some minutes both of them remained buried in their thoughts. Evidently, if the king had sent for Haller, it was to endeavor to dispose him in his favor. There was, perhaps, something to be made from this situation. This was the thought that came to Madame Haller. Her thoughts immediately reverted to her son, her handsome, her dear Con- rad, now all pale, all disfigured by vexation; her Conrad who, throwing his weary head passionately on his mother’s lap, had said to her, this very morn- ing, that he would end his life if he could not obtain the hand of his well-beloved Walpurga! Madame Haller knew so well the immense loyalty and unalterable integrity of her husband that she had a real chill and fever through her whole body in thinking upon the ideas which were agitating her at this moment. To say to Haller: “Promise the king to pronounce a judgment in his favor if he will grant thee thy nobility and that of thy family,” had been such an outrage to his long life of honor and integrity, that she would not have attempted it for anything in the world. With all the subtlety which belongs to a woman, not having the appearance of attaching any import- ance to this appeal of the king, she uttered a pro- found sigh. “What is the matter, my dear?” demanded Hal- ler, who adored his wife and son. Gomicbooks.com