Beautiful Rienzi; or, The secret vendetta — page 274: what you’re looking at

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

BEAUTIFUL RIENZI. 269 sleeper only breathed the more heavily, and muttered a few words. Mrs. Cartier took courage and struck another match. By the light of this, she found an open box on the dressing-table containing black powder which she slipped in her pocket, then she secured the casket of jewels which was carelessly displayed on the table, and looked about for the cash which had been mentioned. ‘‘At this moment Baby Isolina began to struggle pre- paratory to giving one of her imperative screams, and the nurse darted out, and flying past her accomplice stifled the child’s cries until she reached the street. She ran every step of the way back to Mr. Rienzi’s house, and reached it perfectly undiscovered. She did not dare to lay the child down until she had scratched with a needle the identical spear she had seen in the other, and rubbed in the black powder, at which the child screamed so violently that the housekeeper came rushing in fullof alarm. But Mrs. Car- tier allowed her to suspect nothing, and soon had the babe to sleep again. ‘‘Mrs. Cartier had received such a fright from this mid- night episode that she resolved to leave her situation, be- fore her employers came home, which she did a few days subsequently, only waiting for another woman to take her lace. re She carried the box of jewels to the chief of her gang, retaining, however, the largest diamond necklace, upon every gold medallion of which was engraved the arms of some house. The diamond and a medallion linked to it, were all that remained of the necklace, and the old woman gave them to me as proofs of the truth of her story. The arms are those of the Joselyns. ‘‘Mrs. Cartier saw the girl two days after her adven- ture, and heard from her that Mrs. Joselyn’s child had been found dead in its cradle next morning—‘ With a face as black as if it was in ‘a convulsion-fit, and a blue ring round its neck!’ she declared, and Mrs. Joselyn was crazy- like and didn’t seem to grieve a bit, and hung over the little body for hours wondering how it was so like her baby, and when Cartier ventured back to the boarding- house on some pretext, she heard that Mrs. Joselyn was stark mad, and they did not know what to do with her. ‘‘The whole of this business caused Cartier considerable uneasiness lest she might be implicated and drawn into CORNUCG OOO S (©)