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.

The master of Burleigh Grange appeared in the almost forgotten glory of his court suit,—­a coat of crimson velvet, a flowered waistcoat, satin knee-breeches, and a sword at his side.  The mistress wore an equally memorable brocade, enormous bouquets thrown upon a silvery ground, so stiff and shiny that it seemed a texture of ice and frozen flowers.  Her hair was cushioned and powdered; she looked comely and stately, and wore her lustres well.  The pretty Bessie was attired in maidenly white muslin, an India