United States or Cyprus ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
As for honest Roger Burleigh, he was beside himself with amazement and indignation at the folly and ingratitude of his niece and the measureless presumption of "that infernal puppy of a play-actor," as he denominated Zelma's clever husband.
Zelma's youthful charms, heightened by her sumptuous dress, took her audience by surprise, and, while voice and action delayed, made for her friends and favor, and bribed judgment with beauty. King Manuel receives his captives with a courteous speech, only a few lines; but, during their reading, through what a lifetime of fear, of pain, of unimaginable horrors passed Zelma!
Bury at finding that a very modest amount of personal property was all that his runaway wife could hope to receive from her relatives, that she was utterly portionless, her father having more than exhausted the patrimony of a younger son. He had supposed, from Zelma's apparently honorable position in the household of her uncle, that she was, if not an heiress, at least respectably dowered.
It was touched with autumnal shadows, it was comparatively hard and dry, not from any inartistic misapprehension of the poet's ideal, but because the fountain of youth in Zelma's own soul ran low, and was choked by the dead violets which once sweetened its waters.
It was finally, for Zelma's sake, through the unsolicited influence of Sir Harry Willerton, that "Mr. Lawrence Bury, Tragedian," attained to a high point in a provincial actor's ambition, a London engagement.
So, had any luckless intruder chanced to discover Zelma's trysting-place, thrown open to the world the hidden romance in which she took such shy and secret delight, and handled in idle gossip the delicate joys and fragile hopes of young love, it is more than likely that she would have been frightened away from bower and lane, shocked and disenchanted.
"How anxiety for his wife dashes his spirit!" said the charitable audience. At the close of this act the manager grasped Zelma's hand, and spoke of her success as certain. She thanked him with an absent air, and gazed about her wistfully. Surely her husband should have been the first to give her joy. But he did not come forward.
Days went on, and Bessie's pure, transparent nature, a lily-bud of sweetest womanhood, seemed unconsciously revealing itself, leaf by leaf, to all the world, and blooming out its beautiful innermost life; but Zelma's secret still smouldered in her shut heart, never by any chance flaming up to her lips in words.
It was during this first London season that the manager of Covent Garden, himself an actor, remarked the rare capabilities of Zelma's face, voice, and figure for the stage, and in a matter-of-fact business way spoke of them to her husband.
After a time Bessie came stealing up from the drawing-room, and lay down by her cousin's side, softly, for fear of waking her; and all night long Bessie's secret curled about her smiling mouth, and quivered through the lids of her shut eyes, and overran her red lips in murmurs of happy dreams; but Zelma's secret burned like slow fire in her deepest heart.
Word Of The Day