Days went on, and Bessie’s pure, transparent nature, a lily-bud of sweetest womanhood, seemed unconsciously revealing itself, leaf by leaf, to all the world, and blooming out its beautiful innermost life; but Zelma’s secret still smouldered in her shut heart, never by any chance flaming up to her lips in words.  Her month assumed a look of rigid resolution, almost of desperation; and her eyes shone with a hard, diamond-like brilliancy, fitful, but never soft or tearful.  Her manner grew more and more moody and constrained, till even her matter-of-fact uncle and aunt, good easy souls, and her absorbed cousin, became curious and anxious.  The little elfish black pony was in more frequent request than ever; for his mistress now went out at any hour that suited her whim, in any weather, chose the loneliest by-ways, and rode furiously.  Often, at evening, she ascended a dark gorge of the western hills and plunged down on the other side, as though in hot pursuit of the setting sun; and at length there came a report from the gossiping post-mistress of a little village over there, that she came for letters, which she duly received, addressed in a dashing, manly hand.  This story, coming to the ears of Roger Burleigh, quickened his dull suspicions that “something was wrong with that poor girl”; and just as he was getting positive and peremptory, and Bessie perplexed and alarmed, Zelma disappeared!

For several days there were anxious inquiries and vain searches in every direction,—­storming, weeping, and sleeplessness in the Squire’s usually happy household; and then came a letter, whose Scottish post-mark revealed much of the mystery.  It was from Zelma, telling that she had left the Grange forever, and become the wife of “Mr. Bury, the strolling player”; and saying that she had taken this step of her own free will, knowing it to be a fatal, unpardonable sin against caste, and that it would set a great gulf between her and her respectable relatives.  Yet, she asked, had not a gulf of feeling, as deep and wide, ever separated their hearts from the gypsy’s daughter? and was it not better and more honest to break the weak social ties of protection and dependence which had stretched like wild vines across the chasm to hide it from the world?  She then bade them all an abrupt and final farewell It was a letter brief, cold, and curt, almost to insolence; but beneath her new name, which was dashed off with somewhat of a dramatic flourish, there appeared hurriedly scrawled in pencil a woman’s postscript, containing the real soul of the letter, a passionate burst of feeling, a bitter cry of long-repressed, sorrowful tenderness.  It implored forgiveness for any pain she might ever have given them, for any disgrace she might ever bring upon them,—­it thanked and blessed them for past kindness, and humbly prayed for them the choicest gifts and the most loving protection of Heaven.  This postscript was signed “Zelle,”—­the orphan’s childish and pet name at the Grange, which she now put off with the peace and purity of maidenhood and domestic life.