Beautiful Rienzi; or, The secret vendetta — page 224: what you’re looking at

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

BEAUTIFUL RIENZI. 219 until I could return and openly claim her. If unforeseen trouble arose she was instantly to summon me, and I would assume my proper place as her husband. a ‘All this I proposed, to soothe the trembling misgivings of my dear girl; the moment of our parting was drawing near and grief was swelling in her lovely bosom. She feared some dark misfortune—we should never meet again—some- thing would come between us. ‘«<“Nothing can, my own wife, but death!’ I whispered. ‘‘We both live, Ivanilla, but her foreboding has come to ASS. ‘At last I had togo. I gazed once more into those love- some eyes, which beamed as if Heaven’s constancy dwelt within them; I pressed in my arms a form which clung to me with throbbing heart, and fond, murmured words; I breathed for the last time the dear farewell to my wife. My good friend Pemberton rushed out at the last moment for me, and our parting was mercifully brief. Still I remem- bered my beautiful bride, standing in the door of the little cottage, pale, tearful, yet striving to smile lest my heart should break—her last word a heroic one. ««<There is nothing to fear—I do not regret.’ “Tnafew minutes we were far apart, and I was steaming toward New York. When I reached the city I purchased the wedding-ring, and had my wife’s initials engraved in- side, with the date on which the ring should reach her— ‘July 16th.’ I had an old family ring of the Joselyns, a curious piece of workmanship intended to conceal a ring in- side; this I slipped the ring into, and sent with my first let- ter to my wife. It was during my passage home to England that I soothed my bereaved heart, by painting that picture of our love-scene behind the cottage, and which afterward in playful sport I sent to Isolina. | ‘‘T arrived home to find my sister In a decline, and rap- idly failing. The joy which she felt at my return produced for atime a favorable effect; she rallied and seemed to throw off the disease. Iwas like my old self; and she clung to me with the most touching affection. I told her the secret source of my happiness; with what sympathy and wondering interest she listened; then when my darling’s letters began to arrive, breathings of the purest and most exalted con- stancy, how my gentle sister’s tears of love fell as I would read to her passages which she might share. COMICOOO S (©)