Beautiful Rienzi; or, The secret vendetta — page 90: what you’re looking at

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

BEAUTIFUL RIENZI. 85 ‘There, my darling, there!” cried my poor father, with the tears upon his cheek, ‘‘ don’t eye me that way; I'll let you rest. my poor girl.” So we laid her down and soothed her fears, and she lay quiet, looking at me. Well might I ask—was this our Isolina? Ah, now I felt how I had yearned for my Beautiful; how my heart had clung to her bright vision—how fond memory had painted me, my radiant sister; now that my eyes watched this wasted figure in the blue serge gown. And envious recol- lection cast up in pathetic contrast, a brilliant picture of “<The Beautiful Rienzi” as last she stood in this room, robed in richness, her cheeks like the heart of a Languedoc rose, when the sunset gleams most redly through the leaves, her eyes filled with beanty’s rays, her form replete with na- ture’s rarest gifts. | Away with that fairy dream! Let it not touch the grief- stricken gray of this picture; gone is the tender grace of that day, vanished the brightness, the joy! The shadow has spread dim wings above the sunny head and touched the bloom with death; the hand of Ruth has been busy; the unholy spell has been flung! And yet—this dear wreck—she looks at me with silent, suffering tenderness; she will not speak, but her mute glance speaks for her and knits my sobbing heart to hers. Wrecked as she is, silent, mysterious, changed, I clasp her in my arms, and cry, with grateful soul uplifted: ‘* Thank Heaven she 1s home again!’ CHAPTER XI. CONSPIRACY TO CHEAT THE GALLOWS. ‘¢Oh! breaking heart that will not break, h! pale, pale face, so sweet and meek, Thou smilest, but thou dost nct speak, What wantest thou? whom dost thou seek ?” TENNYSON, And now our duty lay plain before us. Seeing that Isolina Rienzi was in her proper senses, though a little inclined to melancholy madness; further- more, seeing that she either would not or could not throw CORNUCG OOO S (©)