Beautiful Rienzi; or, The Secret Vendetta — page 123: what you’re looking at

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

116 BEAUTIFUL RIENZI. insane females. That Miss Rienzi was not insane, and would give no reason why she was there. ‘That the fact was proved that Miss Rienzi had been with Cecil Beaumont at the moment of his death, as they had been seen together by a witness who was present, five minutes or so before the ac- cident. That she, the deponent, had reason to believe there was an animus in the prisoner’s mind against Cecil Beaumont as he had displeased her on the evening of his death.” As she left the witness box, my unhappy sister turned and looked on her with such a long, sorrowful gaze, that the hard girl flushed to the brows, and quailed, despite her bold arrogance. Mr. Bently, the counsel for the State, then went on with the facts of the case where Miss Meredith left off. He said that on the night of the 29th of November, the body of Cecil Beaumont had been found, partly in and partly out of a half-frozen brook, just beneath a wooden bridge over which he had been pushed, as had been proved by the appearance of the bridge. The railing had been partly broken down, and being old and decayed, had given way be- fore the weight of the body which had been dashed against it; furthermore, one panel of said railing had been found beneath the body of the deceased, thus proving clearly that he had been pushed over advisably, and with intent to kill him. A lady’s lace sleeve had been found clenched in the hand of the deceased; also, drifted down some distance from the body, a lady’s handkerchief, on which was written Miss Rienzi’s name. Both the sleeve and the handkerchief were produced. The handkerchief I recognized—the bare sleeve I had never seen; it was not like what my sister had worn ‘on the night of the concert; I rapidly whispered to my father; he cojmmunicated to Mr. Speingle, who nodded two or three times. “<The body,” resumed Mr. Bently, ‘‘was discovered by an itinerant salesman, who was now present, and would be shortly called upon to give his testimony—who, upon dis- covering it, instantly ran to the nearest house for aid, and brought back with him a man, who assisted him to carry the: body up to the house. This house happened to be Mrs. Beaumont’s, the mother of the unfortunate young man, who dispatched him at once to the nearest magistrate for a (Eo) Gomicbooks