King Manuel receives his captives with a courteous speech,—­only a few lines; but, during their reading, through what a lifetime of fear, of pain, of unimaginable horrors passed Zelma!  Stage-fright, that waking nightmare of debutantes, clutched her at once, petrifying, while it tortured her.  The house seemed to surge around her, the stage to rock under her feet.  She fancied she heard low, elfish laughter behind the scenes, and already the hiss of the critics seemed to sing in her reeling brain.  A thousand eyes pierced her through and through,—­seemed to see how the frightened blood had shrunk away from its mask of rouge and hidden in her heart,—­how that poor childish heart fluttered and palpitated,—­how near the hot tears were to the glazed eyeballs,—­how fast the black, obliterating shadows were creeping over the records of memory,—­how the first instinct of fear, a blind impulse to flight, was maddening her.

She raised her eyes to the royal box, where sat a stout, middle-aged man, with a dull, good-humored face, a star and ribbon on his breast, and by his side a woman, ample and motherly, with an ugly tuft of feathers on her head, and a diamond tiara, which lit up her heavy Dutch features like a torch.  The King, the Queen!

Just at this moment, his Majesty was in gracious converse with a lady on his right, a foreign princess, of an ancient, unpronounceable title,—­a thin, colorless head and form, overloaded with immemorial family-jewels,—­a mere frame of a woman, to hang brilliants upon.  She was one shine and shiver of diamonds, from head to foot;—­she palpitated light, like a glow-worm.  Her Majesty, meanwhile, was regaling herself from a jewelled snuff-box, and talking affably over her shoulder to her favorite mistress of the robes, the fearful Schwellenberg.

But Zelma, looking through the transfiguring atmosphere of loyalty, beheld the royal group encompassed by all the ideal splendor and sacredness of majesty;—­over their very commonplace heads towered the airy crowns of a hundred regal ancestors, piled round on round, and glimmering away into the clouds.

Ere she turned her fascinated eyes away from the august sight, her cue was given.  She started, and struggled to speak, but her lips clung together.  There was a dull roar and whirl in her brain, as of a vortex of waters.  In piteous appealing she looked into the face of her husband, and caught on his lips a strange, faint smile of mingled pity and exultation.  It stung her like a lash!  Instantly she was herself, or rather Zara, a captive, but every inch a queen, and delivered herself calmly and proudly, though with a little tremble of her past agitation in her voice,—­a thrill of womanly feeling, which felt its way at once to the hearts of her audience.