Beadle's Dime Novels No. 3: Myra, the Child of Adoption — page 27: what you’re looking at

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

ANXIETY. 25 pass, by the broken banks of a rivulet. Thick trees fell over it, and in some places the water was completely embowered by their branches. She could hear the tread of a horse from the spot, should one pass up from the city; and so, with a. cheek that kindled and a heart that leaped to each sound, the young creature sat down to wait. To wait! oh, how hard a task for her untamed spirit, her eager wishes! Never till her with Mr. Clark had Zulima’s vivid nature been fully > hever before had she been capable of the exquisite joy, ‘the intense suffering that marked every stage of her at- tachment to that lofty and singular man. As she sat then by the lonely brook, the young creature gave herself up to a reverie that embraced all her life, for life with her seemed to have commenced only since she had met him. She drew forth his letters and read them again and again; tears blinded her sometimes, but she swept them away with her fingers, and read on, kissing here and there a line that spoke most eloquently to her heart. She came to the last letter; that was more ardent in its language, and warmer in its expression of loye, than any of the others had been. Why was this the last? What had happened to check a pen so eloquent, to chill a heart so warm? Was he dead? This was Zulima’s thought; she never doubted his faith or distrusted his honor for a single moment. When the serpent jealousy reaches a heart like hers, it comes with a fling, striking his fang sud- denly and at once. Zulima was not jealous, but that fierce pain lay coiled close by her heart, ready to make a leap that should envenom her whole being. More than once Zulima had started from her seat at some slight sound, which proved to be only a bird rising from the overhanging bank, or a rab- bit leaping across the thick sward, and thus, between hope and despondency, dreams and thoughts of the stern real, the time crept by till noon. A wooden bridge scarcely lifted above the water, spanned the brook only a few yards from where Zulima was . Here the bank fell abruptly, giving de- scent to a pretty cascade half swept by a sheet of pendant willow-branches. ‘Their delicate shadows, broken with long gleams of sunshine falling aslant the water, told Zulima that the time of Ross’s return was fast drawing near. Now she became cruelly restless. Like some — ~—_ sent down ~ hd ow ~~ | a commicldoOolkSn(eo)