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The Secret Dispatch; Or, The Adventures of Captain Balgonie
The Secret Dispatch Or The Adventures of Captain Balgonie Author:James Grant Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. NATALIE. Theke are few Russian ladies now, who do not speak with equal facility, German, French, and English; but Natalie Mierowna and her cou... more »sin 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 boyar, 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-skinnedleauty, 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. It was when she spoke of the Empress, that her white bosom heaved, and a fiery expression seemed to pervade her whole features. She said little, and that little was generally said with assumed gentleness or real reserve, for language cannot be too guarded in Russia; but her dark eyes flashed, her delicate nostrils dilated, her short upper lip quivered, she threw back her proud head, and more than once Balgonie saw her white hands clenched; for all the dove-like softness of her nature seemed to depart, when she thought of the affront that exile from Court had put upon her, and her whole family, even to delaying the marriage of her cou...« less