direction,--storming, weeping, and sleeplessness in the Squire's usually
happy household; and then came a letter, whose Scottish post-mark
revealed much of the mystery. It was from Zelma, telling that she had
left the Grange forever, and become the wife of "Mr. Bury, the strolling
player"; and saying that she had taken this step of her own free will,
knowing it to be a fatal, unpardonable sin against caste, and that it
would set a great gulf between her and her respectable relatives. Yet,
she asked, had not a gulf of _feeling_, as deep and wide, ever separated
their hearts from the gypsy's daughter? and was it not better and more
honest to break the weak social ties of protection and dependence which
had stretched like wild vines across the chasm to hide it from the
world? She then bade them all an abrupt and final farewell It was a
letter brief, cold, and curt, almost to insolence; but beneath her new
name, which was dashed off with somewhat of a dramatic flourish, there
appeared hurriedly scrawled in pencil a woman's postscript, containing
the real soul of the letter, a passionate burst of feeling, a bitter cry
of long-repressed, sorrowful tenderness. It implored forgiveness for any
pain she might ever have given them, for any disgrace she might ever
bring upon them,--it thanked and blessed them for past kindness, and
humbly prayed for them the choicest gifts and the most loving protection
of Heaven. This postscript was signed "Zelle,"--the orphan's childish
and pet name at the Grange, which she now put off with the peace and
purity of maidenhood and domestic life.

When it was known how Zelma Burleigh had fled, and with whom, the
neighboring gentry were duly shocked and scandalized. The village
gossips declared that they had always foreseen some such fate for "that
strange girl," and sagely prophesied that the master of Willerton Hall
would abandon all thought of an alliance with a family whose escutcheon
had suffered so severely. But they counted on the baronet, not on the
man,--and so, for once, were mistaken.

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.

As he was one day talking over the sad affair with his friend Sir Harry,
who best succeeded in soothing him down, he inveighed against all actors
and actresses in the