strongest terms of aversion and contempt, giving
free expression to the violent provincial prejudice of his time against
players of all degrees.

"But, my dear Sir," interrupted the young Baronet, "your niece has not
become an actress,--only the wife of a promising actor."

"No,--but she will be one yet. She's stage-struck now, more than
anything else; and mark my words,--that villain will have her on the
boards before the year's end, and live by her ranting. Why, you see, Sir
Harry, strolling is in the blood, and must out, I suppose. The girl, as
you may have heard, is half gypsy. My brother, Captain Burleigh, was a
sad scamp, and actually married a Spanish Zincala! He was drunk at the
time, we have the consolation to believe, or he could never have so far
belied his good old English blood, dissipated dog as he was. To be sure,
she saved his life once, and really was a beautiful, devoted creature,
by all accounts; and if Zelma had done no worse than she,--run away with
any poor devil, provided only he were a gentleman,--or if she had gone
off vagabondizing with one of her mother's people, it would not have
been so infamous an affair as it is; she might still have been accounted
an honest woman;--but, my God, Sir Harry, a strolling player!"

Mrs. Burleigh was but a dutiful echo of her husband's prejudices, and
gave up her hapless niece as lost beyond redemption; but Bessie, though
she grieved more than either, suffered from no sense of humiliation, and
allowed no virtuous anger, no injurious doubts, to enter her blessed
little heart. Yet she missed her lost companion, her strong friend, and,
still vine-like in her instincts, turned wholly to the new support,--to
one who submitted himself gladly to the sweet inthralment, and felt all
the grander for the luscious weight and tendril-like clasp. And so Love
came to pretty Bessie's heart "with healing in his wings."

* * * * *

Unspeakable was the dismay of Mr. Bury at finding that a very modest
amount of personal property was all that his runaway wife could hope to
receive from her relatives,--that she was utterly portionless, her
father having more than exhausted the patrimony of a younger son. He had
supposed, from Zelma's apparently honorable position in the household of
her uncle, that she was, if not an heiress, at least respectably
dowered. Had he been better informed, it is doubtful whether,
improvident and enamored as he was, he wo