Zelma, a startling
nearness--to respectable lodgings on the second floor.

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. The leading actor looked annoyed, and
sought to change the subject of conversation; but as the wife's dreamy
eyes flashed with sudden splendor, revealing the true dramatic fire, the
manager returned upon him with his artistic convictions and practical
arguments, and at length wrung from him most reluctant consent that
Zelma, after the necessary study, should make a trial of her powers.

Though well over the first summer-warmth of his romantic passion,
Lawrence Bury had not yet grown so utterly cold toward his beautiful
wife that he could see that trial approach without some slight
sympathetic dread; but his miserable egoism forbade him to wish her
success; in his secret heart he even hoped that an utter, irretrievable
failure would wither at once and forever her pretty artistic
aspirations.

Zelma chose for her _debut_ the part of Zara in "The Mourning
Bride,"--not out of any love for the character, which was too stormy,
vicious, and revengeful to engage her sympathies,--but because it was
rapid, vehement, sharply defined, and, if realized at all, she said,
would put her, by its very fierceness and wickedness, too far out of
herself for failure,--sweep her through the play like a whirlwind, and
give her no time to droop. It had for her heart, moreover, a peculiar
charm of association, as her first play,--as that in which she had first
beheld the hero of her dreams, "the god of her idolatry," before whom
she yet bowed, but as with eyes cast down or veiled, not in reverence,
but from a chill, unavowed fear of beholding the very common clay of
which he was fashioned.

The awful night of the _debut_ arrived, as doomsday will come at last;
and after having been elaborately arrayed for her part by a gossiping
tire-woman, who _would_ chatter incessantly, relating, for the
encouragement of the _debutante_, tale after tale of stage-fright,
swoons, and failure,--after having been plumed, powdered, and most
reluctantly rouged, the rose of nineteen summers having suddenly paled
on her cheek, Zelma was silently conducted from her dressing-room by her
husband, who, as Osmyn, took his stand with her, the guards, and
att