Beautiful Rienzi; or, The Secret Vendetta — page 71: what you’re looking at

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

- ae ¥ ‘ ee Te . =e et v« ae 64 BEAUTIFUL RIENZI. ‘minutes until I suddenly observed in the inside of the circlet the graven initials, ‘‘I. J., July 16th, 1862.” Had I found some accurate foothold at last? Who and what was «‘T, J.,” and where had my sister been on the sixteenth of July, last summer? Were these the initials of the giver of the double ring? Long I stood revolving these slight proofs of some con- cealed events in my mind; vague speculation was the only result. I replaced the double-ring in its secret drawer and locked the desk. All these dumb reminders of her overthrew my enforced calmness; I flung myself on the floor and wept until my very being seemed wept away. Then I rose, drew down the blinds, closed the curtains, locked the door, and came away. Henceforth no foot should cross the threshold, no eyes make common property of this deserted chamber, until the day that the shadow passed away from us, and my lost sister came home. I related with minute care all that I had found to my father, and he listened attentively. | The case amounts to this,” he said, when IJ had fin- ished: | ‘«Tsolina received a ring on the sixteenth of last July from some person whose initials are ‘I. J.-—which she has worn since on her hand, until, as you believe, the night on which she went out in the rain-storm secretly. _We can ‘make very little of this, Iva, except that probably she formed some attachment last summer with a person whom she has not mentioned, and at the time she removed the ring, that attachment must have ended. I cannot see that either that circumstance or her strange absence from the house that stormy night are connected in-any way with her present disappearance. None of the names which you have written down as applicants for her hand commence with the initials ‘I. J..—and I knew of them all. I do not think we can unravel the mystery—perhaps, my dear, we ought not to try until your poor sister is restored to us. I have perfect faith, and I know you have the same, in my kind, good Isolina’s motives.” “* But, father, her mysterious grief—what if she had ene- mies, who were wiling her away to destroy her?” “‘I did think at first of secret conspiracies; but that is Gomicbooks..co