Her Royal Lover: A Novel — page 45: what you’re looking at

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

HER ROYAL LOVER. 37 fascinating creature who had escaped him should belong to him, cost what it might. In order to fort- ify himself in this resolution, he sought to persuade himself that it was not only right, but also his duty, and that he could not forfeit it without failing in honor. From this time forward he thought of noth- ing else but the means which would facilitate the success of his enterprise. What became of Najeska, when, in the bloom of her nineteen summers, she married this serious man whom she esteemed without loving? What would be hereafter her existence, bound to that of a hus- band twenty years older than she, and whoa long time since had already exhausted the cup of pleasure of an existence which she was still ignorant of and which she was eager to learn? Wholly new to the pleasures and the impressions of life, she wished to go, to roam, to enjoy every- thing, seeking to forget or to diminish the loss of this adored man of whom her heart was full, and of whom, even on the first days of her marriage, she had not ceased to think. But she was so young when she had loved him! Before the age of twenty, the affections have not yet the strength which they assume when years come to confirm their character, and the love of that time is to that of later years only like the froth which ascends to the surface of the bubbling spring to the profound passions which then consume us. Gradually this memory, which she had believed to be indelible, was effaced. Great duties, the sacred duties of maternity alone occupied her heart; that love which to-day would be sacrilege, she lavished upon the cherished heads of her two little twin girls, babies, who, ten months after her marriage, seemed Gomicbooks (E(0)