Beautiful Rienzi; or, The Secret Vendetta — page 28: what you’re looking at

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

Sate ad tyre ies Ps -* ake aay Oe sF, = \ 2 ola, = : * pa ms < nate be” = ’ * - 5 ¢ é Phe S| a ees . 4 ~ F pe <b me ; + : : f ~ bee % . = * r a BEAUTIFUL RIENZL 21 coming night, alone in the city streets! Great Heaven, this was Isolina! I dropped the curtain and went to my sister’s bedroom door; it was locked. I knocked once, twice. I thought there was a rustle within, aud my breath thickened. No, it was but the hail rattling on her window. I entered the dressing-room, it was empty and dark. I crept back to my room, shaking and sobbing, and threw myself on the floor to weep; the storm, without, was but a summer zephyr to the storm within my heart. I now saw that she had a life apart from me—that I knew nothing of the girl I called my sister, and loved so fondly. She had her experiences which I must not share, which her father, who doted on her, must not know. Perhaps some | mysterious ruin would come and swallow her up, and leave - us bereft of her forever! | Then I pictured her purity, her goodness. Oh! we must not leave our loved one. I sprang up and hurried on a long cloak, resolved in my frenzy, to pierce the mystery. I locked my door, sped down stairs, slipped open the front door and ran out into the storm. Ah! what a shrieking blast! These pitiless arrows of forked sleet, how would she survive them? In the heart of a resistless deluge of rain and wind, I was swept down the gravel walk to the gate; like her I clung to the stone parapet; as she had done, I waited fora lull, to open: the gate and be whirled down thestreet. I would run with the speed of the wind and overtake her and bring her home, or | weep until she let me go with her. 4 But when I turned my sad, half blinded eyes upon the home I was leaving, the clear ring of the first dinner-bell smote my ear. Was it possible? An hour gone by already? I could not overtake her now—she had been an hour in the storm. Were my eyes dazzled with the wind, or did Isee a light pouring from the window of the locked bedroom? The heavy gate clanged from my passive hand—lI gazed wildly up. A shadow was moving back and forward before the window, and now a blaze of light was visible from the dressing-room which I had left in darkness. Was I in a miraculous dream? I flew back to the house, stole up stairs, and gained my room. Sophie was knocking at my door and standing in the dark. bs Comicbooks.com