endants at the left wing, awaiting the summons to the presence of
King Manuel. As they were listening to the last tender bleating of
Almeria, the same pretty actress whom Zelma had seen as Zara at Arden,
and the gruff responses of her sire, an eager whisper ran through the
group;--the King and Queen had entered the royal box! This was quite
unexpected, and Zelma was aghast. Involuntarily, she stretched out her
hand and grasped that of her husband;--as she did so, the rattle of the
chains on her wrist betrayed her. The attendants looked round and
smiled;--Lawrence frowned and turned away, with a boy's pettishness. He
had been more than usually moody that day; but Zelma had believed him
troubled for her sake, and even now interpreted his unkindness as
nervous anxiety.

The next moment, everything, even he, was forgotten; for she stood, she
hardly knew how, upon the stage, receiving and mechanically
acknowledging a great burst of generous British applause.

It was a greeting less complaisant and patronizing than is usually given
to _debutantes_. 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! Stage-fright, that waking
nightmare of _debutantes_, clutched her at once, petrifying, while it
tortured her. The house seemed to surge around her, the stage to rock
under her feet. She fancied she heard low, elfish laughter behind the
scenes, and already the hiss of the critics seemed to sing in her
reeling brain. A thousand eyes pierced her through and through,--seemed
to see how the frightened blood had shrunk away from its mask of rouge
and hidden in her heart,--how that poor childish heart fluttered and
palpitated,--how near the hot tears were to the glazed eyeballs,--how
fast the black, obliterating shadows were creeping over the records of
memory,--how the first instinct of fear, a blind impulse to flight, was
maddening her.

She raised her eyes to the royal box, where sat a stout, middle-aged
man, with a dull, good-humored face, a star and ribbon on his breast,
and by his side a woman, ample and motherly, with an ugly tuft of
feathers on her head, and a diamond tiara, which lit up her heavy Dutch