Beautiful Rienzi; or, The secret vendetta — page 262: what you’re looking at

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

BEAUTIFUL RIENZI. 207 ‘‘'Ves; a strange phenomenon is explained, which puzzled your mother and me all our lives, since Isolina was an in- fant. Oh, if we could have arrested the guilty wretch who has claimed her, I should have wrenched the truth from her!” ‘‘ Beaumont will overtake them yet; don’t despair,” said the doctor, trying to speak hopefully. Then he began to tell me what had first induced him to interest himself in our cause. ‘TI received, three months ago, an anonymous letter in England, which stated that a lady named Isolina Joselyn had been injured by my misrepresentations, and if I would fulfill my promise of assisting her when in trouble, I would at once proceed to New York, where he, the writer, pledged himself to meet me, and put the facts of the case in my hands. “Upon my arrival at New York, I found a letter at the post-office for me, directing me to Wrexville, a small village in Maryland. ‘“Implicity following my directions, I traveled South, and at the only inn of the place in question found myself expected. ‘In two hours a young man entered my presence, in whom I recognized with consternation Cecil Beaumont who had carried off Mrs. Joselyn, and declared himself to be Victor’s brother. He soon disarmed me, however, when he informed me of Isolina’s true fate. He had been taking her that fatal night to the house of his mother, in the hope of inducing her to marry him there, when she informed him that she was his half-sister, and already the wife of Victor Joselyn. “« He allowed her to explain all the circumstances, then, fired by sudden despair, he attempted to put an end to him- self by leaping over a bridge. He was only stunned, how- ever, and much broken, and when he recovered he was in his mother’s house. For six long weeks he lay at the brink of death with brain fever, and when he recovered he was lying at Silverlea, attended by his mother. When he re- gained his senses, she told him that Isolina was in a mad- house, incurably insane, and that the Rienzis had given up when they found she was not their daugher. ‘‘Tt was well on in spring before he was able to rise from his bed. As soon as he was convalescent he left his mother, CORNUCG OOO S (©)