When it was known how Zelma Burleigh had fled, and with whom, the neighboring gentry were duly shocked and scandalized.  The village gossips declared that they had always foreseen some such fate for “that strange girl,” and sagely prophesied that the master of Willerton Hall would abandon all thought of an alliance with a family whose escutcheon had suffered so severely.  But they counted on the baronet, not on the man,—­and so, for once, were mistaken.

As for honest Roger Burleigh, he was beside himself with amazement and indignation at the folly and ingratitude of his niece and the measureless presumption of “that infernal puppy of a play-actor,” as he denominated Zelma’s clever husband.

As he was one day talking over the sad affair with his friend Sir Harry, who best succeeded in soothing him down, he inveighed against all actors and actresses in the 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.”

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