Читать книгу The Secret Dispatch; or, The Adventures of Captain Balgonie онлайн

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As it was, though detached and distant on the Livonian frontier, he was now conceiving a scheme for vengeance, much more perilous to himself and to all concerned, and which actually aimed at the dethronement of the Empress Catharine!

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There are few Russian ladies now, who do not speak with equal facility, German, French, and English; but Natalie Mierowna and her cousin were then each mistress of them all,—and this was in the comparatively barbarous time of Catharine II.

Thus their acquaintance with European literature enabled them to excel in an easy and well-supported conversation of which the old bovar, their kinsman, could make nothing; and which they could embellish by their wit and power of quotation, and with an exquisite finesse d'esprit peculiarly their own. When this dangerous charm was added to the great beauty of Natalie, she could not but prove a perilous acquaintance for the young Scottish wanderer.

Her loveliness was indeed great.

She was a large, showy, and snowy-skinned beauty, almost voluptuous yet very graceful in form, with fine dark eyes, that were dreamy or sparkling by turns as emotion moved her; long-lashed they were, and perhaps too heavily lidded. Her hair was of the darkest brown, almost black; her lips were full, but flexible, small and pouting when in repose, almost too large when she smiled, which was frequently.