The Princess or the Beguine (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1855 edition. Excerpt: ..." I leave my friend, here," said Lord Montressor, "whom we have found in the thick of the row, to answer for himself. Sir Frederick Mottram, Madame la Princesse de Schaffenhausen." And he pushed Sir Frederick, whom he held by the arm as tightly as Sir Ignatius had held his coat, towards the door of the britzka. Sir Frederick's first impulse at this strange, unlooked-for, and most unlucky rencontre with nearly all the persons he was most desirous to avoid, had been to make his escape: his next was to stand firm, and trust to the fact that Sir Ignatius Dogherty had, in his drunkenness, mistaken him for another person: he had as much forgotten that there had been a moment in which he was in want of a shirt, as he was ignorant, through the silence of Fegan on that particular, that he had availed himself of the flower of Sir Ignatius's wardrobe. This dense twilight introduction to the Princess, in the narrowest and most dusky part of the Montagne de la Cour, divested it of much of the awkwardness and confusion he could neither repress nor conceal, but which he felt in every nerve and fibre. " Lady Frances is here, I suppose?" said the Princess, " though she never mentioned her journey when I saw her the night before I left London." The cool effrontery of this reminiscence astounded Sir Frederick. " No," said Lord Montressor; " we husbands are only the avantgarde. Lady Frances joins you here, I suppose, Mottram?" Mottram answered ' unwittingly--he knew not what.' " When did you arrive, messieurs?" asked the Princess; " and where are you going?" " Here, St. Leger, come forward," said Lord Alfred: " he will tell you; he is the sense-keeper of our party." "Monsieur St. Leger did always like what you call the sind cure," said the Princess. " My...