Beautiful Rienzi; or, The secret vendetta — page 200: what you’re looking at

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

BEAUTIFUL RIENZI 195 Mrs. Ringwood, whom I had seen sometimes in church was sitting by the bed. My patient turned out to be a young man in the last stages of weakness, who had just reached the crisis of a brain fever, and, though conscious, was so prostrated that recovery seemed impossible. Some intense emotion had evidently seized upon him with the return of memory, and produced a hemorrhage from the lungs, and he was fast bleeding to death. The circumstances were so imminent that no questions could be asked, and it was only by the most extreme measures that I reduced the bleeding and alleviated his sufferings. No sooner was the danger passed than Mrs. Ringwood dismissed me, paying me hand- somely, and promising to summon me if required. I was not summoned, however, and after the caution I had re- ceived I was careful to keep my own counsel about the widow lady’s visitor. | ‘Describe the young man,” I exclaimed. ‘““My dear young lady, it would be impossible for you to have recognized your own father after such an illness. I daresay you never saw a young fellow with a shaved head, and skin as white and bleached as a piece of dressed kid? The only objects in the face which looked like life were a pair of restless, large brown eyes, which flashed now and then with a very curious reddish glare, the like of which I never observed before. Can’t account for 1t, sir—can you? Could it be the effect of repeated light on the retina, or some unusual property contained in the figment or coloring matter? Very extraordinary eyes they were, from whatever cause.” «Stay!” I cried, with upraised hand and breath coming thick and short; ‘‘ Doctor Pemberton, he has described Cecil Beaumont’s eyes! This woman—beyond the possibil- ity of doubt—this Mrs. Ringwood is Mrs. Beaumont!” ““T may add one thing more,” said Doctor Whitney, commencing to button his coat; “‘the young man had a deep scar on his left temple, which was scarcely healed, and ‘one arm was in splinters, and bandaged up. The widow lady gave me no explanation of these wounds; I was allowed to believe that he had been a soldier—probably a Southern soldier. ‘«“And now I must be off and catch the fag-end of my night’s sleep, for indeed J am a little shaken by the rate at which that zealous young man Nelson made my old mare CORNUCG OOO S (©)