On her first night in this play, Zelma was startled by recognizing among the audience the once familiar faces of her uncle Roger, her cousin Bessie, and Sir Harry Willerton.  They had all come up to London to draw up the papers and purchase the trousseau for the wedding, which would have taken place a year sooner, but for the death of Bessie’s mother.

Squire Burleigh had been entrapped by his daughter and her lover into coming to the play,—­he being in utter ignorance as to whom he was to see in the part of Juliet.  When he recognized his niece in the ball-room scene, he was shocked, and even angry.  He started up, impetuously, to leave the house; and it was only by the united entreaties of Bessie and Sir Harry that he was persuaded to stay.  As the play went on, however, his sympathies became enlisted, in spite of his prejudices.  Gradually his heart melted toward the fair offender, and irrepressible tears of admiration and pity welled up to his kindly blue eyes.  He watched the progress of the drama with an almost breathless interest while she was before him, but grew listless and indifferent whenever she left the stage.  The passion of Romeo, the philosophy of the Friar, the quaint garrulousness of the Nurse, the trenchant wit of Mercutio were alike without charm for him.

But though thus lost in the fortunes and sorrows of the heroine of the play, the dramatic illusion was far from complete for him.  It was not Juliet,—­it was Zelma, the wild, misguided, lost, but still beloved child of his poor brother; and in his bewildered brain her sad story was strangely complicated with that of the hapless girl of Verona.  When she swallowed the sleeping-draught, he shrank and shuddered at the horrible pictures conjured up by her frenzied fancy; and in the last woful scene, he forgot himself, the play, the audience, everything but her, the forlorn gypsy child, the shy and lonely little girl whom long years ago he had taken on his knee, and smoothed down her tangled black hair, as he might have smoothed the plumage of an eaglet, struggling and palpitating under his hand, and glancing up sideways, with fierce and frightened eyes,—­and now, when he saw her about to plunge the cruel blade into her breast, he leaped to his feet and electrified the house by calling out, in a tone of agonized entreaty,—­“Don’t, Zelle! for God’s sake, don’t!  Leave this, and come home with us,—­home to the Grange!”

It was a great proof of Mrs. Bury’s presence of mind and command over her emotions, that she was not visibly discomposed by this strange and touching appeal, or by the laughter and applause it called forth, but finished her sad part, and was Juliet to the last.

When, obeying the stormy summons of the audience, the lovers arose from the dead, and glided ghost-like before the curtain, Zelma, really pale with the passion and woe of her part, glanced eagerly at the box in which she had beheld her friends;—­it was empty.  The worthy Squire, overcome with confusion at the exposure he had made of his weakness and simplicity, had hurried from the theatre, willingly accompanied by his daughter and Sir Harry.