Her Royal Lover: A Novel — page 49: what you’re looking at

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

HER ROYAL LOVER, 41 CHAPTER YV, THE JEALOUS HUSBAND. Madame de Mineleko, Najeska Ivanowna, had never been able to discard the habit which in her youth she had acquired in the steppes of her father. For her to mount a horse every day was a need, a necessity, a happiness. Her husband generally ac- companied her on her rides; but if the ambassador, detained by any reason, could not do so, she went without him, and followed by a groom, surrendered herself entirely to this pleasure, one of the few which had remained to her. Now the day after the one on which the prince had been officially received by the king, and on which the king, being a widower, had come to the hotel of the embassy to call upon Madame le Ambassadrice*, his majesty had encountered them taking their ride. Was it chance afterward which each morning found the king upon the route of the prince and princess? At first Mineleko endeavored to stifle the jealousy which, anew, consumed his heart; but after this great betrothal ball, where, in- fatuated by the beauty of the new ambassadress, which he saw for the first time in all the splendor of a festive toilet, the king had neither suppressed nor concealed the intense attraction that this woman exercised over him. The ambassador said to him- *According to the etiquette of the court an ambassadress must al- ways receive the first visits of a king who is a widower, whereas it is she who would be obliged to make it to the palace if there was a living queen. cComicbooks (€ @)