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Updated: May 4, 2025
Out of doors she was not less evidently Zuleika's. Not that she aped her mistress. The resemblance had come by force of propinquity and devotion. Nature had laid no basis for it. Not one point of form or colour had the two women in common. It has been said that Zuleika was not strictly beautiful. Melisande, like most Frenchwomen, was strictly plain.
Her curiosity was unworthy of her, she knew, unworthy of Monte-Cristo's daughter. What right had she to pry into the heart secret of one of her school companions? Still she gazed; she could not help it. Suddenly she stooped and took the envelope from the ground. The address riveted her eyes like a magician's spell. Great heavens! it was her own name Zuleika!
"Zuleika," cried he, sadly, "you do not love me; you never loved me; I have been the victim of a cruel deception!" "If you think so," answered the young girl, quietly, "there is but one course you can pursue as a man of honor spurn the deceiver from you and never look upon her face again!" The young man gazed at her reproachfully.
A writer who should attempt to introduce into a play or a novel such a Wharton as the Wharton of Pope, or a Lord Hervey answering to Sporus, would fail in the same manner. But to return to Lord Byron; his women, like his men, are all of one breed. Haidee is a half-savage and girlish Julia; Julia is a civilised and matronly Haidee. Leila is a wedded Zuleika, Zuleika a virgin Leila.
To calculate, catch, distribute, seemed in her but a single process. She was one of those who are born to make chaos cosmic. Insomuch that ere the loud chapel-clock tolled another hour all the trunks had been sent empty away. The carpet was unflecked by any scrap of silver-paper. From the mantelpiece, photographs of Zuleika surveyed the room with a possessive air.
The moonlight fell upon the seat that Zuleika and Mlle. d' Armilly had occupied beneath the honey-suckle-covered arbor that morning; Bouche-de-Miel gave a sudden start as he glanced at it, half-repenting of having yielded to Waldmann's command under the impulse of his hatred for Monte-Cristo and his desire for revenge; he trembled violently in spite of all his efforts to maintain composure and his face became one mass of sweat beneath his protecting mask.
Zuleika, Valentine, M. Morrel and Espérance were too far away from the witness stand to comprehend a syllable, but like the spectators in the body of the hall they divined what was on the point of coming, holding their breath in fear and expectation.
The hostess was charmed, and told Zuleika that a glass of lemonade would be served to her in the hall. Other engagements soon followed. Zuleika was very, very happy. I cannot claim for her that she had a genuine passion for her art. The true conjurer finds his guerdon in the consciousness of work done perfectly and for its own sake. Lucre and applause are not necessary to him.
She was sorry to interrupt their family council, but the fire was going out where she sat, and she would like a cup of tea or some refreshment. She did not look at Jack, but, completely ignoring him, addressed herself to Zuleika with what seemed to be a direct challenge; in that feminine eye-grapple there was a quick, instinctive, and final struggle between the two women. The stranger triumphed.
Some of the elder ones stood with closed eyes and heads sunk forward, now and again jerking themselves erect, and blinking around, wondering, remembering. And for a while this scene was looked down on by a not disinterested stranger. For a while, her chin propped on her hands, Zuleika leaned over the rail of the gallery, just as she had lately leaned over the barge's rail, staring down and along.
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