so
famous, she was hardly more successful now. In losing her bloom and
youthful fulness of form, she had not gained that statuesque repose, or
that refined essence of physical power and energy, which sometimes
belongs to slenderness and pallor. She was often strangely agitated and
unnerved when the occasion called most for calm, sustained power,--at
times, glancing around wildly and piteously, like a haunted creature.
Her passion was fitful and strained,--the fire of rage flickered in her
eye, her relaxed lips quivered out curses, her hand shook with the
dagger and spilled the poison. Her sorrows, real and imaginary, seemed
to have broken her spirit with her heart.

But in anything weird and supernatural, awful with vague, unearthly
terrors, she was greater than ever. Whenever, in her part of Lady
Macbeth, she came to the sleep-walking scene, that shadowy neutral
ground between death and life, where the perturbed, burdened spirit
moans out its secret agony, she gave startling token of the genius which
had electrified and awed her audiences of old. A solemn stillness
pervaded the house; every eye followed the ghost-like gliding of her
form, every ear hung upon the voice whose tones could sound the most
mysterious and awful depths of human grief and despair.

* * * * *

It was during the first season of her reappearance that Mrs. Bury went
to Drury Lane, on an off-night, to witness one of the latest efforts of
Garrick as Richard the Third. He was, as usual, terribly great in the
part; but, in spite of his overwhelming power, Zelma found herself
watching the Lady Anne of the night with a strange, fascinated interest.
This part, of too secondary and negative a character for the display of
high dramatic powers, even in an actress who should be perfect mistress
of herself, was borne by a young and beautiful woman, new to the London
stage, though of some provincial reputation, who on this occasion was
distressingly nervous and ill-assured. She had to contend not only with
stage-fright, but Garrick-fright. "She met Roscius in all his terrors,"
and shrank from the encounter. The fierce lightnings of his dreadful
eyes seemed to shrivel and paralyze her; even his demoniac cunning and
persuasiveness filled her with mortal fear. Her voice shook with a
pathetic tremor, became hoarse and almost inaudible; her eyes sank, or
wandered wildly; her brow was bathed with the sweat of a secret agony;
she migh