a soft, lambent flame in every glance, seemed to have burned
itself out in her hollow eyes, or to have been quenched in tears.

She flung herself on her cousin's breast with a laugh of pure joy and a
child's quick impulse of lovingness; but almost immediately drew herself
back, as with a sudden sense of having leaned across a chasm in the
embrace. But Bessie, guessing her feeling, clung about her very
tenderly, calling her pet names, smoothing her hair and kissing her wan
cheek till she almost kissed back its faded roses. And infinite good she
did poor Zelma.

Bessie--dear, simple heart!--was no diplomatist; she did not creep
stealthily toward her object, but dashed at it at once.

"I am come, dearest Zelle, to win you home," she said. "You cannot think
how lonely it is at the Grange, now that dear mamma is gone; and
by-and-by it will be yet more lonely,--at least, for poor papa. He loves
you still, though he was angry with you at first,--and he longs to have
you come back, and to make it all up with you. Oh, I am sure, you must
be weary of this life,--or rather, this mockery of life, this prolonged
fever dream, this playing with passion and pain! It is killing you! Why,
you look worn and anxious and sad as death by daylight, though you do
bloom out strangely bright and beautiful on the stage. So, dear, come
into the country, and rest and renew your life."

Zelma opened her superb eyes in amazement, and her cheek kindled with a
little flush of displeasure; yet she answered playfully,--"What! would
you resolve 'the new star of the drama' into nebulousness and
nothingness again? Remember my art, sweet Coz; I am a priestess sworn to
its altar."

"But, surely," replied Bessie, ingenuously, "you will not live on thus
alone, unprotected, a mark for suspicion and calumny; for they say--they
say that your husband has deserted you."

"Mr. Bury is absent, fulfilling a professional engagement. I shall await
his return here," replied Zelma, haughtily.

Bessie blushed deeply and was silent. So, too, was the actress, for some
moments; then, softened almost to tears, half closing her eyes, and
letting her fancy float away like thistle-down over town and country,
upland, valley, and moor, she said softly,--"Dear Burleigh Grange, how
lovely it must be now! What a verdurous twilight reigns under the old
elms of the avenue!--in what a passion of bloom the roses are unfolding
to the sun, these warm May-days! How the honeysuckles dr