Beautiful Rienzi; or, The secret vendetta — page 26: what you’re looking at

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

BEAUTIFUL RIENZI. 21 coming night, alone in the city streets! Great Heaven, this was Isolina! I dropped the curtain and went to my sister’s bedroom door; it was locked. I knocked once, twice. I thought there was a rustle within, aud my breath thickened. No, it wae but the hail rattling on her window. I entered the dressing-room, it was empty and dark. I crept back to my room, shaking and sobbing, and threw myself on the floor to weep; the storm, without, was but a summer zephyr to the storm within my heart. I now saw that she had a life apart from me—that I knew nothing of the girl I called my sister, and loved so fondly. She had her experiences which I must not share, which her father, who doted on her, must not know. Perhaps some mysterious ruin would come and swallow her up, and leave us bereft of her forever! Then I pictured her purity, her goodness. Oh! we must not leave our loved one. I sprang up and hurried on a long cloak, resolved in my frenzy, to pierce the mystery. I locked my door, sped down stairs, slipped open the front door and ran out into the storm. Ah! what a shrieking blast! These pitiless arrows of forked sleet, how would she survive them? In the heart of a resistless deluge of rain and wind, I was swept down the gravel walk to the gate; like her I clung to the stone parapet; as she had done, I waited fora lull, to open the gate and be whirled down thestreet. I would run with the speed of the wind and overtake her and bring her home, or weep until she let me go with her. But when I turned my sad, half blinded eyes upon the home I was leaving, the clear ring of the first dinner-bell smote my ear. Was it possible? An hour gone by already? I could not overtake her now—she had been an hour in the storm. Were my eyes dazzled with the wind, or did I sce a light pouring from the window of the locked bedroom? The heavy gate clanged from my passive hand—I gazed wildly up. A shadow was moving back and forward before the window, and now a blaze of light was visible from the dressing-room which I had left in darkness. Was I in a miraculous dream? I flew back to the house, stole up stairs, and gained my room. Sophie was knocking at my door and standing in the dark. CORNUCG OOO S (©)