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In fact, Zelma Burleigh was the fruit of a strange mésalliance between the younger brother of the Squire, a reckless, dissipated soldier of fortune, and a beautiful Spanish Zineala, whom he met in a foreign campaign, and whom he could not bind to himself by any tie less honorable than marriage. She was said to be of Rommany blood-royal, and was actually disowned by her tribe for her mésalliance.
He paused, but did not remove his passionate looks from the young girl's face, looks which, though cast down, for he was much the taller of the two, had the effect of most lowly and deprecating entreaty; and then there happened an event, a very slight, common, natural event, the result more of girlish embarrassment than of any conscious emotion or purpose, yet of incalculable importance at that moment, and, perhaps, decisive of the fate of two human hearts, Zelma smiled.
Making at the same moment the first announcement of his going and his hurried adieux to Zelma, who heard his last cold words in dumb dismay, with little show of emotion, but with heavy grief and dread presentiments at her heart, he departed. He was accompanied by the fair actress with whom he played first parts at Arden, but now, green-room gossip said, not in a merely professional association.
Bessie returned to Arden, married the master of Willerton Hall, and slid into the easy grooves of a happy, luxurious country-life; while Zelma rode for a few proud years on the topmost swell of popular favor, then suddenly passed away beyond the horizon of London life, and so, as it were, out of the world.
Zelma was large, but lithe, supple, and vigorous, with a pard-like freedom and elasticity of movement, dark, with a subdued and changing color, the fluttering signal of sudden emotion, not the stationary sign of robust health.
Poor Zelma did not have the presence of mind to greet this sudden apparition of a lover in the apt words of her part, "What man art thou, that, thus bescreened in night, So stumblest on my counsel?" She had no words at all for the intruder, but, frightened and bewildered, sprang from her seat and turned her face toward home, with a startled bird's first impulse to flight.
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