Beautiful Rienzi; or, The Secret Vendetta — page 283: what you’re looking at

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

276 BEAUTIFUL RIENZI. unrepiningly a burden that was far too crushing for her slender frame, and when she would have failed through weakness and discouragement, he studied her wants, and guarded her from many a needless vigil with the capricious and exacting lunatic. In a few months the very slender stock which Mrs. Beau- mont possessed was swallowed up, and in order to gratily the extravagant whims of her who was formerly a woman of luxury, Isolina openedasmall school. The gentle fortitude of my nobler sister shone out. The pale and tender face grew daily sweeter; her very presence seemed to calm the troubled air; the American school-mistress came to be spoken of as a saint uncanonized, and the children all thought that the Madonna must be like Mlle. Lucille, as she was called, who was so good to her poor, afflicted mother, and so sweet to everybody. And a day came when her cross was lifted at last. The wild, gloomy eyes had appealed to her for the last time, and the murmuring lips were still, and the word of confession which had tortured that trembling soul too late, was un- spoken forever, and the worn child was free. Ah! free to nestle home to hearts, which would close round her, and warm her chill life into fresh hopes—tfree to love unchecked, to taste the gifts whick God intended for her. - She had expended the last of her scanty means in burying Mrs. Beaumont, and had but a few shillings to take her the long journey overland to New York. And now the old Italian, Moresco, signified that he would take her safely home to her friends; he would not have her without a pro- tector, if she would take him to be her servant, as her mother had done before her. But Ralph was claimed by another Master. On the day following the funeral Isolina found the nurse Cartier’s let- ter to Mrs. Beaumont carefully concealed in her dressing- case, which, inthe first astonishment of reading, she brought to Ralph. He recognized it as the packet which a gipsy boy from the camp had brought while Isolina was relating the circumstances which separated her from her family. The boy had been sent by Baree with injunctions to de- liver it into Morecombe’s hands for Mrs. Beaumont. Such is the outline of Rienzi’s experiences. We never heard the full weight of that triat which had rested upon her from her own lips; another, after this meeting, when GEomichbooks..¢o