"Oh, don't, Zella!" exclaimed the Squire, with a look of comic deprecation,—"don't speak in that way to your old uncle! He's blunt and rough-spoken, but he means kindly, and does kindly, in his way,—don't he?"
"Yes, that he does!" said the young girl, frankly; "and I beg his pardon for my pettishness."
Zelma Burleigh, as she stood thus, a faint, regretful smile softening the habitual hauteur of her face, was beautiful, and something more; yet nobody in the country round about the Grange had ever dreamed of calling her "a beauty." She was a tall, gracefully-formed girl, with that strong, untamable character of figure and feature, and that peculiar, sun-tinted, forest-shadowed hue of the skin, which betray the slightest admixture of gypsy blood. In fact, Zelma Burleigh was the fruit of a strange mésalliance between the younger brother of the Squire, a reckless, dissipated soldier of fortune, and a beautiful Spanish Zineala, whom he met in a foreign campaign, and whom he could not bind to himself by any tie less honorable than marriage. She was said to be of Rommany blood-royal, and was actually disowned by her tribe for her mésalliance. She followed the camp for a few years, the willing, though sad and fast-fading slave of her Ishmaelitish lord, himself the slave of lawless passions, yet not wholly depraved, —fitfully tender and tyrannic,—and when, at last, he fell in some inglorious skirmish, she buried him with her own hands, and wept and fasted over his shallow grave till she died. There was a child, but she had no look of the father to charm that poor, broken heart back to life; she was left in the camp and became a little "Daughter of the Regiment." At last, however, she was taken to England by a faithful comrade of the dead soldier, who sought out her uncle and left her in his care, taking leave of the frightened, clinging little creature with a grim, unspoken tenderness, and a strange quiver of his gray moustache.
Roger Burleigh, after having made himself sure of the legitimacy of the child, adopted the poor, wild thing, made her the companion of his daughter, and honestly strove to treat her, at all times, with parental care and affection.
Here, in the hospitable circle of an English home, the orphan alien had grown up with her kinsfolk, but not of them,—proud, reticent, ambitious, secretly hating the monotonous duties and pursuits, the decorous forms and prescribed pleasures of the social and domestic life around her. Nomadic and lawless instincts stirred in her blood; vague longings for freedom and change, though in wandering, peril, and want, sometimes filled her soul with the spirit of revolt and unrest.
In her bluff uncle's house all were kind, and one, at least, was fond. Her Cousin Bessie, gay and tender heart, had found the southern exposure of her nature, and had crept up it, and clambered over it, and clasped it, and bloomed against it, and ripened on it, till nothing cold, hard, or defiant could be seen on that side. And Zelma seemed well content to be the sombre background and strong support of so much bloom, sweetness, and graceful dependence.
Nothing could be more unlike than the two cousins. Bessie was small, her form inclining to fulness, her face childlike in dimpled smiles and innocent blushes,—betraying no lack of intellect, but most expressive of a quiet, almost indolent amiability. Zelma was large, but lithe, supple, and vigorous, with a pard-like freedom and elasticity of movement,—dark, with a subdued and changing color,—the fluttering signal of sudden emotion, not the stationary sign of robust health. She had hair of a glistening blackness, which she wore turned back from a strong, compact forehead, in the somewhat severe style which imperial beauty has rendered classic in our time. Her eyes were of the Oriental type,—full, heavy-lidded, ambushed in thick, black lashes,—themselves dark and unfathomable as the long night of mystery which hangs over the history of her wild and wandering race, those unsubduable, unseducible children of Nature,—the voluntary Pariahs of the world. Sad were those eyes always, but with a vague, uncommunicable sadness; soft they were in times of quiet; beautiful and terrible they could be, with live gleams of suddenly awakened passion.
With but one affection not poisoned by a sense of obligation and condescension, and that a sentiment in which her intellect had little share, a gentle, protective, household love, which quickened no daring fancy, inspired no dream of freedom or power, Zelma's mind was driven in upon itself, and out of the seclusion and triteness of her life fashioned a fairy world of romance and beauty. With the high-wrought, sentimental fictions of the day for her mental aliment, she grew more and more distinct and apart from the actual, prosaic existences around her; the smouldering fires of genius and ambition glowed out almost fiercely at times, through the dark dream of her eyes, startling the dullest apprehension, as she moved amid a narrow circle of country gentry, the fox-hunting guests of her uncle, the prim gossips of her aunt, the gay lovers and companions of her cousin, an unrecognized heroine, an uncrowned tragedy-queen.
The small provincial town of Arden possessed no playhouse proper, but, after a good deal of hesitation and discussion, the venerable Hall of St. George, the glory of all Ardenites, had been accorded to the players, "for a few nights only."
On the night of the first performance, Squire Burleigh and his family arrived betimes, and took their places with some bustle and ceremony.