y party,
and her gaze fixed intently upon the stage. Sir Harry could only see
half the rose of one cheek, and the soft sweep of golden hair which
lightly shaded it; and feasting his fancy on that bit of fluctuating
color, entangled in the meshes of a tremulous screen of curls, he
settled himself to await the close of the act.

It was with a child's eager interest and pliant imagination that Bessie
looked and listened,--susceptible, credulous, unfastidious. To her,
the Osmyn of the night was radiant with all heroic qualities and manly
graces, the weakly simulated sorrow of Almeria brought real tears to her
eyes, and she drew her white shoulders forward with a shudder when
the wooden Zara kindled into cursing and jealous rage. Illusions most
transparent to others hoodwinked her senses; her willing fancy supplied
feeling, and even made up for deficiencies of art in the players, till
the mimic world before her became more real than reality.

Not so with Zelma. She was satisfied, even charmed, with the personation
of Osmyn; but, from the first, she could not abide either of the
heroines, who, each in her part, strove to outdo the other in mincing,
mouthing, attitudinizing, and all imaginable small sins against Nature
and Art. She saw at once, by the sure intuitions of genius, how
everything they did could be done better, and burned to do it. The part
of Almeria she soon dismissed from her thoughts, as mere milk-and-water;
but she saw that in that of Zara there was a stream of lava, though
dulled and crusted over by the coldness of the actress, which might
be made to sweep all before it. Her critical dissatisfaction with the
personation became, at last, little short of torture; there was an
involuntary lowering of her dark brows, a scornful quiver of her
spirited nostril, she bit her lip with angry impatience, and shrugged
her shoulders with irrepressible contempt.

In the great scene where Zara surprises Almeria in the cell of Osmyn,
it was astonishing how the flaxen-haired representative of the Captive
Queen managed to turn her fiery rain of curses into a little pattering
shower of womanish reproaches. It was really a masterly performance, in
its way.

At this point Zelma threw herself back in utter weariness and disgust,
exclaiming, audibly,--"Miserable!--most miserable." When, looking round,
she saw the traces of her cousin's innocent emotion, the flush and
tearfulness which bespoke her uncritical sympathy with passio