Beautiful Rienzi; or, The secret vendetta — page 215: what you’re looking at

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

210 BEAUTIFUL RIENZI. ‘On that day, my guardian, obeying a secret codicil of my father’s will, put me in possession of the strangely hid- den history of my mother; and I found that the house, which I had always considered untarnished, had its es- cutcheon blackened by a stain, which blurred my life for- ever. { ‘‘ During one of his visits to Italy, my father had seen in one of the principal theaters of Rome a beautiful actress, whose attractions were so extraordinary that he, obeying his natural passion for obtaining. what pleased his eye, almost without knowing who she was, laid his brilliant for- tune at her feet, and to his joy was graciously accepted. ‘Stella’ forsook the stage, married her English adorer, and to the lasting envy of some half a dozen others, was borne to the ancient palace on the Lower Avon, in old Somerset. Upon more minutely studying his prize, my father found her to bethe daughter of a patrician family of Florence, who in some moment of ill temper had fled from them and gone upon the stage. She had a ferocious temper, was an infidel of the most daring type, and soon evinced the most perfect indifference to her husband, and the children which she bore him. ‘‘ Before long my unfortunate father was glad to rove in distant countries more than ever; during which time his wife, as the fit seized her, would suddenly leave home and her two infant children to travel likewise to various places on mysterious missions. In this way, my father once met her hurrying through the streets of one of the cities of the United States, quite alone and unprotected, as he was bringing to a close a long tour which he had made through North America. Shenever made the slightest explanation, but went home with my father, and remained a year, dur- ing which time he did not venture to leave her alone, as her moods seemed more desperate than before. A third child was born, a daughter, and when it was three weeks old, my wretched mother disappeared with it, and mother or child was never heard of since, despitethe most careful search. I was four years old when this happened; my sister Alicia not more than two. “Such was the birthright that became mine with my fortune. It changed me from a gay, careless youth, into a humiliated brooder, forever chafing over my disgrace. became morbidly alive to every whisper that my galled pride I CO an LIAOO S (©)