Her Royal Lover: A Novel — page 331: what you’re looking at

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

HER ROYAL LOVER. 393 CHAPTER XLIV. NAJESKA’S REFLECTIONS. In the convent, the days were passing slowly and despairingly forthe unhappy Najeska Ivanowna, who was not ignorant of the events which were agitating the Thessalian Court. Glascha, who had been in her service since her sixteenth year, had left her almost as soon as she arrived at the convent. Although the Prince of Narish had saved this creature from the poverty wherein she was stagnating she had not hesitated to abandon her exiled and sick mistress. The cold, produced by her journey from which Najeska Ivanowna had suffered since her arrival at the monastery, kept her continually confined to her chamber, and to the acute pains that the rarefied air of those high altitudes was producing in her chest, to the numberless anxieties which were assailing her despite the thick walls behind which she had taken refuge, a new apprehension had come to add itself. A new misfortune which she dared not confess to herself had startled her in the most secret recesses of her being. Her feminine instinct, her mother’s heart, felt stirring in her bosom the dear little creature to which she would give birth. This infant, that of the ungrateful king, of a father without justice, she loved already. Her child! this one, like her dear little daughters, belonged to her—to her alone. Among these three little beings, under the special protection of the Eomicbooks.co