Beautiful Rienzi; or, The secret vendetta — page 113: what you’re looking at

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

108 BEAUTIFUL RIENZI. CHAPTER XIV. WHAT I SAW, OR SEEMED TO SEE. ‘‘ Are yeaware that he who comes behind Moves what he touches? The feet of the dead Are not so wont!’—DanrTE, Three days before the trial, the English steamer arrived, with my mother on board. | She came sweeping up through the evening mists of the river and under the myriad stars. There was no moon, and the night wasdark, asmy father and I drove down to meet her at the wharf. I heard the loud snorting of the escaping steam and the rattling of the chains, as we drove down behind a stream of cabs and hacks thither bound for bewildered travelers. We stepped a little to one side, under a great fiery signal lamp, and my father went on board among the throng, leaving me sitting in the carriage wait- ing. This scene is indelibly impressed upon my memory. At first I regarded all this shifting panorama in the mass; then individually; gradually with concentrated interest. At first my eyes swept round the area, watching general effects, and ending off with the object nearest me—a man who leaned against the lamp-post. Anon, with a leap of the startled heart, I confined my distended eyes to the figure nearest me, standing, as I have said, beneath the sig- nal lamp, and consequently in the very deepest shadow. A cab, with flashing lights had rumbled past with its occupants—a happy, reunited family to judge by the ba- bel of happy voices, and looking incidentally at the somber lounger, one gleam of yellow light from the passing cab had fallen on a face well known. Heavens! how I had thrilled at the prophetic woe of these red-brown eyes. Had I not pictured that protean face, white and set? Ah, had I not mourned on a grave which held those shattered limbs? A wild prayer rose in my heart; a blazing light shot up like a rocket in my veins; I steadily eyed the figure, now in the murky shadow once more. I shook the windows and COMICOOO S (©)