"Mrs. Orme, now that you are comfortable in your wrapper and slippers, let me take down your hair, and then I will bring you a cup of tea; not the vile lukewarm stuff they give us here, but good genuine tea made out of my own caddy, that has some strength, and will build you up. Rehearsals don't often serve you so badly."

"Thank you, Mrs. Waul, but the tea would only make me more nervous, and that is a risk I cannot afford to incur. Please raise both windows, fresh air, even Parisian air, is better for me than anything else."

"You have not seemed quite yourself since we came here, and I don't understand at all why two nights in Paris serve you worse than a week's acting elsewhere."

"Have I not told you that I dread above every other ordeal the critical Parisian audience?"

"But you passed so successfully through it! Last night the galleries absolutely thundered, and people seemed half wild with delight. William says the papers are full of praise."

Mrs. Waul crossed the room to lay upon the bureau the steel pins she had taken from her mistress's hair, and the latter muttered audibly:

"For me the 'ides of March' are come indeed, but not passed."

"Did you speak to me?"

"There comes your husband. I hear his slow, heavy step upon the stairs. Open the door."

As an elderly white-haired man entered, Mrs. Orme put put her hand.

"Letters from home, Mr. Waul?"

"One from America, two from London, and a note from the American minister."

"You saw the minister then? Did he give you the papers we shall require?"

"He has been sick, I believe, but said he would be at the theatre to-night, and would call and see you to-morrow."

"Hear this sentence, good people, from his note: 'Only indisposition prevented my attendance at the theatre last night to witness the brilliant triumph of my countrywomen. Since the palmy days of Rachel I have not heard such extravagant eulogies, and as an American I proudly and cordially congratulate you——'"

"Are you going to faint! Stand back, William, and let me bathe her face with cologne. What is the matter, Mrs. Orme? You shake as if you had an ague."

But her mistress sat with eyes fixed upon a line visible only to herself: "Your countrymen here are very much elated, and to-night I shall be accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Cuthbert Laurance, son of General RenÉ Laurance, whose wealth and social eminence must have at least rendered his name familiar to all Americans travelling in Europe."

"Be quick, Phoebe, and get her a glass of wine. She has no more colour in her lips than there is in my white beard."

"No—give me nothing. I only want rest—quiet."

She crushed the delicate satin paper in her hand, and rallied her composure. After a moment she added:

"A slight faintness, that is all. Mr. Waul, before the curtain rises to-night, I wish you to ascertain in what portion of the house the American minister's box is located; write it on a slip of paper and send it to the dressing-room by your wife. Just now I believe I have no other commissions. If I do not ring my little bell, do not disturb me until five o'clock, then bring me a cup of strong coffee. And, Mrs. Waul, please baste a double row of swan's-down around the neck and sleeves of the white silk I shall wear to-night. Let no one disturb me; not even the manager."

As the husband and wife withdrew, she followed them to the door, locked it on the inside, and returned to the easy chair. With a whitening, hardening face she reread the note, and thrust it into one of the silk pockets of her robe.

Although nine years had elapsed since we saw her first, in the mellow lamplight of Mr. Hargrove's library, time had touched her so daintily, so lovingly, that only two lines were discernible about the mouth, where habitual compression has set its print; and it would have been difficult to realize that she was twenty-eight, had not the treacherous eyes betrayed the gloom, the bitterness, the ceaseless heartache that filled them with shadows, which prematurely aged the whole countenance.

The added years seemed only to have ripened and perfected her exquisite beauty, but with the rounded smoothness, and the fresh, pure colouring of youth was mingled a weird indescribable expression of stern hopelessness, of solemn repose, as if she had deliberately shaken hands for ever with all that makes life bright and precious, and were fronting with calm smile and quiet pulses a grim and desperate conflict, which she well knew could have an end only in the peace of the pall, that long truce, whose signal is the knell and the requiem.

Had she been reared amid the fatalistic influences of Arabia, she could not have more completely adopted and exemplified the marble motto: "Despair is a free man; Hope is a slave." For her the rosy mist that usually hovers over futurity had been swept rudely aside, the softening glow of the To-Come had been precipitated into a dull, pitiless leaden ever present, at which she never raved nor railed, but inflexibly fought on, expecting neither sunshine nor succour, unappalled and patient as some stony figure of Fate, which chiselled when the race was young, feels the shrouding sands of centuries drifting around and over it, but makes no moan over the buried youth, and watches the approaching night with the same calm, steadfast gaze that looked upon the starry dawn, and the golden glory of the noon.

The cautious repression which necessity had long ago rendered habitual had crystallized into a mask, which even when alone she rarely laid aside for an instant. In actual life, and among strong positive natures, the deepest feelings find no vent in the effervescence of passionate verbal outbreaks, and outside the charmed precincts of the tragic stage, the world would not tolerate the raving Hamlets and Othellos, the Macbeths and Medeas, that scowl and storm and anathematize so successfully in the magic glow of the footlights.

To-day, as Madame Odille Orme leaned back in her luxuriously cushioned chair, she seemed quite as a statue, save the restless movements of her slender fingers, which twined and intertwined continually; while the concentrated gaze of the imperial eyes never stirred from the open window, whence she saw—not Parisian monuments of civic glory and martial splendour—only her own past, her haunting skull and cross-bones of the Bygone. Her violet-coloured dressing-gown was unbuttoned at the throat, exposing the graceful turn of the neck, and the proud poise of the perfectly modelled head, from which the shining hair fell like DanÆ's shower, framing the face and figure on a back ground as golden as that of some carefully preserved Byzantine picture.

At last the heavily fringed lids quivered, drooped, the magnificent eyes closed as if to shut out some vision too torturing even for their brave penetrating gaze, and in her rigid whiteness she seemed some unearthly creature, who had done for ever with feverish life and the frail toys of time.

Raising her arms above her head, she rested her clasped hands upon her brow, and in a low, strangely quiet tone her words dropped like icicles.

"It was a groundless fear, that when the long-sought opportunity came my weak womanish nature would betray me, and I should fail, break down utterly under the crushing weight of tender memories, sacred associations. What are they?

"Three dreamy weeks of delirious wifehood, balanced by thirteen years of toil, aspersion, hatred, persecution; goaded by want, pursued ceaselessly by the scorpion scourge whose slanderous lash coiled ever after my name, my reputation. Three weeks a bride,—unrecognized as such even then,—twelve years an outcast,—repudiated, insulted,—mother and child, denied, derided,—cast off as a serpent's skin!—Ah, memory! thou hast no charm to stir the blackened ashes in a heart extinguished by the steady sleet of a husband's repudiation. When love is dead, and regret is decently buried, and the song of hope is hushed for ever, then revenge mounts the chariot and gathers the reins in her hands of steel; and beyond the writhing hearts whose blood dyes her rushing wheels sees only the goal. Some wise anatomists of that frail yet invincible sphinx—woman's nature, babble of one weighty fact, one conquering law,—that only the mother-joy, the mother-love, fully unseals the slumbering sweetness and latent tenderness of her being; for me, maternity opened the sluices of a sea of hate and gall. Had I never felt the velvet touch of tiny fingers on my cheek, a husband's base desertion might in time have been forgiven, possibly at least, forgotten; but the first wail from my baby's lips awoke the wolf in me. My wrongs might slumber till that last assize, when the pitying eyes of Christ sum up the record, but hers—have made a hungry panther of my soul. Come, memory, unlock your treasure house, uncoil your spells, chant all your witching strains, and let us see whether the towers of Notre Dame will not tremble and dissolve as soon as I?"

Bending to a trunk near her chair, she unlocked it, and taking out a papier-machÉ box, opened it with a small key that hung from her watch chain, and placed it on the table before her, where she had thrown the unread letters. Leaning forward, she crossed her arms upon the marble, and looked down on the contents of the box,—her child's letters,—her own unanswered appeals in behalf of her babe,—a photograph of the latter,—and most prominent of all, a large square ambrotype of a handsome boyish face, with a short curl of black hair lying inside the case.

"Idolatrous? Yes all women are, embryo pagans, and the only comfort is, that when the idol crumbles into clay, mocking our prayers and offerings, we still worship at the same old shrine, having dusted and garnished and set thereon—maybe the Furies, which bid fair to survive the wreck of gods, of creeds, and of time. Like Oenone, we are all betrayed sooner or later by our rose-lipped Paris,—

'Beautiful Paris, evil-hearted Paris,'

and after the inevitable foolish tears of vain regret we dry our eyes, and hunt Cassandra, to listen to the muttering of the thunder that is gathering to avenge us—in Troy. Bride and bridegroom, face to face— Cuthbert! So you looked, when we parted, when you strained me to your heart, and swore that before a fortnight passed you would hold 'darling Minnie in your arms once more!' Did you mean it even then? No, no, already the hounds of slander were snuffing in my path, and the toils were spread for my unwary feet. Here, look back at me, my husband, with those fond peerless eyes, as on that day when I saw you last—all mine! To-night—across the gulf of separation, and of shameful wrong—we shall look into each other's faces once more, while another woman wears my name, fills my place at your side. Fair treacherous face of my first and only love,—handsome as a god!—false as Apollyon!"

She had lifted the ambrotype and held it close to her eyes, then her hand sank until the picture dropped back into its place, and the lonely desolate woman buried her face in her palms. The pretty guilt clock on the mantle ticked monotonously, and the hum of life, and the busy roll of vehicles in the vast city, was borne in through the window, like the faint roar of yet distant Niagara; and after awhile when the sharp stroke of the clock announced four the bowed figure raised herself.

Sweeping back the blinding veil of hair, her brilliant brown eyes shone calm and dry, dimmed by no tears of fond womanly regret, and as they fell upon the photograph of Regina, a smile of indescribable bitterness curled the lovely lips that might have served as model for Psyche's.

"'The trail of the serpent is over all.' Can there be pardon for the man who makes me shrink shudderingly at times from her whose little veins were fed from mine, whose pulses are but a throb from my heart, my baby! My own baby, who, when I snatch her in my arms, smiles at me with his wonderful eyes of blue; and wellnigh maddens me with the very echo of a voice whose wily sweetness won my love, to make an hour's pastime, a cheap toy, soon worn out, worthless and trodden under foot after three weeks' sport! Stooping over my baby, when she stretched her little hands and coaxed me to lift her on my lap, I have started back from the sight of her innocent face, as if a hooded viper fawned upon me; for the curse of her father's image has smitten my only darling, my beautiful, proud child! O God! that we had both died in that dim damp ward of the Hospital, where she first opened her eyes, unwelcomed by the father, whose features she bears!"

But beneath this Marah tide that was surging so fiercely over her long-suffering heart, bubbled the pure, sweet, incorruptible fount of mother-love, and while she studied the fair childish face her own softened, as that of some snow image whose features gradually melt as the sunlight creeps across it. It was a picture taken after Regina's removal to the parsonage, and represented her with the white rabbits nestling in her arms.

"My proud little Regina! my pure sensitive darling! How much longer must we be separated? Will the time ever come when the only earthly rest that remains for me can be taken in her soft clinging arms? Patience—patience. If it were not for her—for my baby—I might falter even now,—but she must, she shall be righted—at any sacrifice, at every cost; and may the widow's and the orphan's God be pitiful—be pitiful—at last."

She raised her child's picture in her clasped hands, as if appealing indeed to the justice of Him who "never slumbers, nor sleeps," and the tremor of her lips and voice told how passionate was the affection for her daughter, how powerful the motives that sustained her in the prolonged and torturing ordeal.

Restoring the portraits to their hiding-place, she locked the trunk, and as she resumed her seat seemed suddenly to recollect the letters lying on the table.

One was a brief note, from the manager of the London theatre where she had recently been engaged; the second from a celebrated money-lender, which bore only the signature, "Simon," and was as follows:

"DEAR MADAME,—Since our last conversation relative to the purchase of a certain mortgage, I have ascertained that you can secure it, by adding one hundred pounds to the amount specified by the holder. Should you still desire me to effect the transfer, delay might thwart your negotiation, and I respectfully solicit prompt instructions."

Twice she read these lines, then slowly tore the paper into strips, shredded and threw them toward the grate, while a stony expression settled once more upon her features. The remaining letter was post-marked New York, and addressed, in a bold, round, mercantile hand, but when the envelope had been removed, the formal angular chirography of a schoolgirl displayed itself, and as the sheet was opened there issued thence a delicate perfume that gushed like a breath of spring over the heart of the lonely mother.

Several leaves of lemon-verbena and a few violets fell from the folds of the paper, and, picking them up, Mrs. Orme spread them on her palm. Only a few withered leaves and faded petals that had crossed the Atlantic to whisper fragrant messages of love, from the trusting brave young soul whose inexperienced hand had stiffly traced at the top of the page—"My darling mother."

Ah! what a yearning tenderness glorified the woman's frozen face, as the flowers in her hand babbled of the blue eyes that had looked last upon them, of the childish fingers that brushed the dew from their purple velvet, of the dainty, almost infantile, lips that had fondly pressed them, of the holy prayer breathed over them, that ere the time of violets came again mother and child might be reunited.

Just now she dared not read the letter, dared not surrender to the softening influences that might melt the rigid purpose of her soul, and, kissing the flowers reverently, the mother laid them aside until a more convenient season, and began to walk slowly to and fro….

The play that night was "Kenilworth," and had been cast to admit some alterations made in the dramatization by Madame Orme, who frequently introduced startling innovations in her rendering of her parts, and in almost all her favourite rÔles refused rigid adherence to the written text. The reputation of her beauty and former triumphs, the success achieved on the previous nights, and certain tart criticisms upon the freedom of her interpretation of Scott's lovely heroine—Leicester's wife—combined to draw a crowded house; and ere the curtain rose every box was occupied save one on the second tier near the stage.

As the crash of the orchestra died away, and the play opened with the interview between Lambourn and Foster, followed by Tressilian, and the encounter with Varney, the door of the box opened, and the American minister entered, accompanied by a lady and gentleman, who, after seating themselves and gathering back the folds of the box curtains, proceeded to scan the audience.

As they disposed themselves comfortably a white-haired man, watching through a crevice in the side scene, scribbled on a piece of paper which was handed into the dressing-room: "Second box, second tier, right-hand side. Two gentlemen, and a lady wearing a scarlet cloak."

Sitting between the minister and her husband, Mrs. Laurance with her brilliant wrappings was the most prominent of the group, and in the blaze of the gaslight looked at least thirty-five; a woman of large proportions compactly built, with broad shoulders that sustained a rather short thick neck, now exposed in extreme dÉcolletÉ style, as if to aid the unsuccessful elongation of nature. Her sallow complexion was dark, almost bistre, and the strongly marked irregular features were only redeemed from positive plainness by the large fiery black eyes, whose beauty was somewhat marred by the intrusive boldness of their expression. Bowing to some one opposite, her very full lips parted smilingly over a set of sound strong teeth, rather uneven in outline, and of the yellowish cast often observed in persons of humble birth and arduous life. Her dusky hair, belonging to the family of neutral-brown, was elaborately puffed and frizzed, and in her ears hung large solitaire diamonds that glowed like globes of fire, and scattered rays that were reflected in the circlet around her throat.

Beside her sat her husband, leaning back with negligent grace, and carelessly stroking his silky black moustache with one gloved hand, while the other toyed with a jewelled opera glass. Although only two years her junior, she bore the appearance of much greater seniority, and the proud patrician cast of his handsome face contrasted as vividly with the coarser lower type of hers, as though in ancient Roman era he had veritably worn the clavus and the bulla, while she trudged in lowly guise among the hard-handed heroines of the proletarii.

Over his dreamy violet eyes arched the peculiarly fine jet brows that Mr. Palma had found so distinctive in Regina's face, and his glossy hair and beard possessed that purplish black tint so rarely combined with the transparent white complexion, which now gleamed conspicuously in his broad, full, untanned forehead.

The indolent insouciance of his bearing was quite in accord with his social record, as a proud high-born man of cultivated elegant tastes, and unmistakably dissipated tendencies, which doubtless would long ago have fructified in thoroughly demoralized habits had not his wife vigorously exerted her exigeant guardianship.

"Have you heard the last joke at Count T——'s expense?" said Mrs.
Laurance, tapping the arm of the minister with her gilded fan.

"Do you refer to the contretemps of the masks at the Grand Ball?"

"No, something connected with Madame Orme. It seems the Count saw her in London, became infatuated, as men always are about pretty actresses, and the first night she played here he was almost frantic; wrote a note between the acts, and sent it to her twisted in that costly antique scarf-ring he is so fond of telling people once belonged to the Duke of Orleans. Before the play ended it was returned, with the note torn into several strips and bound around it. Fancy his chagrin! Colonel Thorpe was in the box with him, and told it next day, when we met at dinner. When I asked T—— his opinion of Madame, he answered:

"She is perfectly divine! But alas! only an inspired icicle. She should be called 'Sulitelma,' which I believe means—Cuthbert, what did you tell me it meant?"

"Queen of Snows. Abbie, do lower your voice a trifle." He answered without even glancing at her, and she continued:

"I wanted to see her last night in 'Medea,' but Cuthbert had an opera engagement, and beside, little Maud had the croup——"

A storm of applause cut short the nursery budget, and all turned to the stage where Amy Robsart entered, followed by Janet and by Varney. Advancing with queenly grace and dignity to a pile of cushions in the centre of the drawing-room at Cumnor Place, she stood a moment with downcast eyes, till the acclamation ceased, and Varney renewed his appeal.

Her satin dress was of that exquisite tint which in felicitous French phraseology is termed de couleur de fleur de pÉcher, and swept down from her slender figure in statuesque folds that ended in a long court train, particularly becoming in the pose she had selected. The Elizabethan ruff, with an edge of filmy lace, softened the effect of the bodice cut squares across the breast, and revealed the string of pearls—Leicester's last gift—that shone so fair upon his countess's snowy neck. From the mass of hair heaped high upon her head soft tendrils clustered to the edge of her brow, and here and there a long curl strayed over her shoulder, and glittered like burnished gold in the glare of the quivering footlights. The lovely arms and hands were unburdened by jewels, and save the pearls around her throat and the aigrette of brilliants in the upper bandeau of her hair, she wore no ornaments. The perfect impersonation of a beautiful, innocent, happy bride, impatiently expectant of her husband's entrance, she stood listening to his messenger, a tender smile parting her rosy lips.

The chair of state chanced to be placed in the direction of the minister's box, and only a few feet distant, and when Varney attempted to place her upon it, she waved him back, and, raising her right hand toward it, said in that calm, deep, pure voice which had such thrilling emphasis in its lowest cadences:

"No good, Master Richard Varney, I take not my place there, until my lord himself conducts me. I am for the present a disguised countess, and will not take dignity upon me, until authorized by him, from whom I derived it."

In that brief sentence she knew her opportunity and seized it, for her glance followed her uplifted hand, mounted into the box, and, sweeping across the minister, dwelt for some seconds on the dark womanly countenance beside him, and then fastened upon the face of Mr. Laurance.

Some whose seats were on that side of the house, and who chanced to have their lorgnettes levelled at her just then, saw a long shiver creep over her, as if a blast of cold air had blown down through the side scene, and a sudden spark blazed up in the dilating eyes, as a mirror flashes when a candle flame smites its cold dark surface; but not a muscle quivered in the fair proud face, and only the Varney at her side noticed that when the slight hand fell back it sought its mate with a quick groping motion, and the delicate fingers clutched each other till the nails grew purple.

For fully a moment that burning gaze rested on the features that seemed to possess some subtle fascination for her, and wandering back to the wife, a shadowy smile hovered around the lips that were soon turned, away to answer Varney. As she moved in the direction of a window, to listen for the clatter of horse's hoofs, Mrs. Laurance whispered:

"Is not she the loveliest creature you ever beheld? I never saw such superb eyes, they absolutely seemed to lighten just now. Cuthbert, did you only notice how she looked right at me? I daresay my solitaires attracted her attention—and no wonder, they are the largest in the house, and these actresses always have an eye to the very best jewellery. Of course it must have been my diamonds."

From the moment when Amy Robsart entered, Cuthbert Laurance felt a strange magnetic thrill dart through every fibre of his frame; his sluggish pulse stirred, and as her mesmeric brown eyes, luminous, overmastering, met his, he drew his breath in quick gasps, and his heart in its rapid throbbing seemed to pour liquid fire into the bounding arteries. Some vague bewildering reminiscence danced through the clouded chambers of his brain, pointing like a mocking fiend now this way, then in an opposite direction; one instant assuring him that they had somewhere met before, the next torturing him with the triumphant taunt that he had hitherto never known any one half so lovely. Was it merely some lucky accident that had so unexpectedly brought them during that long flattering gaze thoroughly en rapport?

He no more heard his wife's hoarse whisper, than if a cyclone had whirled between them, and, leaning forward to catch the measured melody that floated from the countess's lips, a crimson glow fired his cheek as he caught the lofty words.

"I know a cure for jealousy. It is to speak truth to my lord at all times; to hold up my mind, my thoughts, before him as pure as that polished mirror, so that when he looks into my heart he shall see only his own features reflected there.[*] Can he who took my little hands and made them wifely, laying therein the precious burden of his honour, afford to doubt the palms are clean?"

[Footnote: * Mrs. Orme's interpolations are all italicized.]

No wonder Varney stared, and the prompter anathematized the sudden flicker of the gas jet that caused him to lose his place; there was no such written sentence as the last, and the rehearsal proved no sure index of all the countess uttered that night, but the play rolled on, and when the folding doors flew open and Amy sprang to meet her noble husband, the house began to warm into an earnest sympathy.

In the scene that followed she sat with childlike simplicity and grace on the footstool at Leicester's feet, while he exhibited the jewelled decorations of his princely garb, and explained the significance of the various orders; and in the face upturned to him who filled the chair of state there was a wealth of loving tenderness that might have moved colder natures than that which now kindled in the deep violent eyes that watched her from the minister's box.

Gradually the curious, timid, admiring bride is merged in the wife, with ambition budding in her heart, and exacting pride pleading for recognition and wifely dignities, and in this transformation the power of the woman asserted itself.

Bending toward Leicester, until from the low seat she sank unintentionally upon her knees, she prayed with passionate fervour:

"But shall not your wife, my love, one day soon be surrounded with the honour which arises neither from the toils of the mechanic who decks her apartment, nor from the silks and jewels with which your generosity adorns her, but which is attached to her place among the matronage, as the avowed wife of England's noblest earl? 'Tis not the dazzling splendour of your title that I covet, but the richer, nobler, dearer coronet of your beloved name, the precious privilege of fronting the world as your acknowledged wife."

Again, in answer to his flattering evasive sophistries, she asked in a voice whose marvellous modulations in the midst of intense feeling seemed to penetrate every nook of that vast building:

"But why can it not be? Why can it not immediately take place, this more perfect uninterrupted union, for which you say you wish, and which the laws of God and man alike command? Think you my unshod feet would shrink from glowing ploughshares, if crossing them I found the sacred shelter of my husband's name? Ah, husband! dost blanch before the storm of condemnation, which has no terrors for a wife's brave heart? It would seem but scant and tardy justice to own thy wedded wife!"

The earl had led her behind the scenes, and the minister had twice addressed him ere Mr. Laurance recovered himself sufficiently to perceive that his companions were smiling at his complete absorption.

"Why—Cuthbert—wake up. You look like some one walking open-eyed in sleep. Has Madame's beauty dazed you as utterly as poor Count T——?"

His wife pinched his arm, but without heeding her he looked quite past her into the laughing eyes of the minister, and asked:

"Do you know her? Is her husband living?"

"I shall call by appointment to-morrow, but this is the first time I have seen her. Of her history I know nothing, but rumour pronounces her a widow."

"Which generally means that these pretty actresses have drunken, worthless husbands, paid comfortable salaries to shut their eyes and keep out of the way," added Mrs. Laurance, lengthening the range of her opera glass, and levelling it at a group where the shimmer of jewels attracted her attention.

How the words grated on her husband's ear, grown strangely sensitive within an hour?

Carelessly glancing over the sea of faces beneath and around him, the minister continued:

"English critics contend that Madame Orme's 'Amy Robsart' is so far from being Scott's ideal creation, that he would fail to recognize it were he alive; still where she alters the text, and intensifies the type, they admit that the dramatic effect is heightened. She appears to have concentrated all her talent upon the passionate impersonation of one peculiar phrase of feminine suffering and endurance—that of the outraged and neglected wife; and her favourite rÔles are 'Katherine' from Henry VIII., 'Hermione,' and 'Medea,' though she is said to excel in 'Deborah.' My brother who saw her last night as 'Medea' pronounced her fully equal to Rachel, and said that in that scene where she attempted to remove her children from the side of the new wife, the despairing fury of her eyes literally raised the few thin hairs that still faithfully cling to the top of his head. Ah—the parting with Leicester—how marvellously beautiful is she!"

Leaning against a dressing-table loaded with toilet trifles and bijouterie, Amy stood, arrayed in the costume which displayed to greatest advantage the perfect symmetry of form and the dazzling purity of her complexion.

The cymar of white silk bordered with swan's-down exposed the gleaming dimpled shoulders, and from beneath the pretty lace coif the unbound glory of her long hair swept around her like a cataract of gold, touching the hem of her silken gown, where, to complete the witchery, one slippered foot was visible. When her husband entered to bid her adieu, and the final petition for public acknowledgment was once more sternly denied, the long-pent agony in the woman's heart burst all barriers, overflowed every dictate of wounded pride, and with an utter abandon of genuine poignant grief, she gave way to a storm that shook her frame with convulsive sobs, and deluged her cheeks with tears. Despite her desperate efforts to maintain her self-control, the sight of her husband's magnetic handsome face, after thirteen weary years of waiting, unnerved, overwhelmed her. There in the temple of Art, where critical eyes were bent searchingly upon her, Nature triumphantly asserted itself, and she who wept passionately from the bitter realisation of her own accumulated wrongs, was wildly applauded as the queen of actresses, who so successfully simulated imaginary woes.

By what infallible criterion shall criticdom decide the boundaries of the Actual and the Ideal? Who shall compute the expenditure of literal heartache that builds up the popularly successful Desdemonas, Camilles, and Marie Stuarts; the scalding tears that gradually crystallize into the classic repose essential to the severe simplicity of the old Greek tragedies?

The curtain fell upon a bowed and sobbing woman, and the tempest of applause that shook the building was prolonged until after a time Amy Robsart, with tears still glistening on her cheeks, came forward to acknowledge the tribute, and her silken garments were pelted with bouquets. Among the number that embroidered the stage lay a pyramid of violets edged with rose geranium leaves, and raising it she bent her lovely head to the audience and kissed the violets, in memory (?) of her far-off child—whose withered floral tribute was more precious to the woman's heart than all the laudatry chaplets of the great city, which did homage to her genuine tears.

Some time elapsed while the play shifted to the court, recounting the feuds of Leicester and Sussex, and when Amy Robsart appeared again it was in the stormy interview where Varney endeavours to enforce the earl's command that she shall journey to Kenilworth as Varney's wife. The trembling submissiveness of earlier scenes was thrown away for ever, and, as if metamorphosed into a Fury, she rose, towered above him, every feature quivering with hatred, scorn, and defiance.

"Look at him, Janet! that I should go with him to Kenilworth, and before the Queen and nobles, and in presence of my own wedded lord, that I should acknowledge him,—him there, that very cloak-brushing, shoe-cleaning fellow,—him there, my lord's lackey, for my liege lord and husband! I would I were a man but for five minutes!—but go! begone!"

She paused panting, then threw back her haughty head, rose on tiptoe, and, shaking her hand in prophetic wrath and deathless defiance, almost hissed into the box beneath which Varney stood:

"Go, tell thy master that when I, like him, can forget my plighted troth, turn craven, bury honour, and forswear my marriage vows, then, oh then! I promise him, I will give him a rival, something worthy of the name!"

Was the avenging lash of conscience uncoiled at last in Cuthbert Laurance's hardened soul that the blood so suddenly ebbed from his lips, and he drew his breath like one overshadowed by a vampire? Only once had he caught the full gleam of her indignant eyes, but that long look had awakened torture's that would never entirely slumber again, until the solemn hush of the shroud and the cemetery was his portion. No suspicion of the truth crossed his mind, even for an instant,—for what resemblance could be traced between that regal woman, and the shy, awkward, dark-haired little rustic, who thirteen years before had frolicked like a spaniel about him,—loving but lowly?

In vain he sought to arrest her attention; the actress had only once looked at the group, and it was not until the close that he succeeded in catching her glance.

After her escape from Varney, Amy Robsart reached in disguise the confines of Kenilworth, and standing there, travel-worn, weary, dejected, in sight of the princely castle, with its stately towers and battlements, she first saw the home whose shelter was denied her, the palatial home where Leicester bowed in homage before Elizabeth. As a neglected, repudiated wife, creeping stealthily to the hearth where it was her right to reign, Amy turned her wan, woeful face to the audience, and, fixing her gaze with strange mournful intentness upon the eyes that watched her from the box, she seemed to throw her whole soul into the finest passage of the play.

"I have given him all that woman has to give. Name and fame, heart and hand, have I given the lord of all this magnificence—at the altar, and England's Queen could give him no more. He is my husband; I am his wife. I will be bold in claiming my right; even the bolder, that I come thus unexpected and forlorn. Whom God hath joined, man cannot sunder."

The irresistible pathos of look and tone electrified that wide assemblage, and in the midst of such plaudits as only Paris bestows she allowed her eyes to wander almost dreamily over the surging sea of human heads, and as if she were in truth some hunted, hopeless, homeless waif appealing for sympathy, she shrouded her pallid face in the blue folds of her travelling cloak, and disappeared.

"She must certainly recognize her countrymen, for that splendid passage seemed almost thrown to us, as a tribute to our nationality. What a wonderful voice! And yet—she is so tender, so fragile," said the minister.

"Did you observe how pale she grew toward the last, and so hollow-eyed, as if utterly worn out in the passionate struggle?" asked Mrs. Laurance.

"The passion of the remaining parts belongs rather to Leicester and the Queen. By the way, this is quite a handsome earl, and the whole cast is decidedly strong and successful. Look, Laurance! were you an artist, would you desire a finer model for an Egeria? If Madame had been reared in Canova's studio she could not possibly have accomplished a more elegant felicitous pose. I should like her photograph at this moment."

In the grotto scene, Amy was attired in pale sea-green silk, and her streaming hair braided it with yellow light, as she shrank back from the haughty visage of the Queen.

Rapidly the end approached, courtiers and maids of honour crowded upon the stage, and thither Elizabeth dragged the unhappy wife, into the presence of the earl, crying in thunder tones: "My Lord of Leicester! knowest thou this woman?"

The craven silence of the husband, the desperate rally of the suffering wife to shield him from the impending wrath, until at last she was borne away insensible in Hunsdon's strong arms, all followed in quick succession, and Amy's ill-starred career approached its close, in the last interview with her husband.

When Cuthbert Laurance was a grey-haired man, trembling upon the brink of eternity, there came a vision in the solemn hours of night, and the form of Amy, wan as some marble statue, breathed again in his ear the last words she uttered that night.

"Take your ill-fated wife by the hand, lead her to the footstool of Elizabeth's throne; say that 'in a moment of infatuation moved by supposed beauty, of which none perhaps can now trace even the remains, I gave my hand to this poor Amy Robsart.' You will then have done justice to me, and to your own honour; and should law or power require you to part from me, I will offer no opposition, since I may then with honour hide a grieved and broken heart in those shades, from which your love withdrew me. Then—have but a little patience—and Amy's life will not long darken your brighter prospects."

The fatal hour arrived; the gorgeous pomp and ceremonial of the court-pageant had passed away, and in a dim light the treacherous balcony at Cumnor Place was visible. In the hush that pervaded the theatre, the minister heard the ticking of his watch, and Mrs. Laurance the laboured breathing of her husband.

Upon the profound silence broke the tramp of a horse's hoofs in the neighbouring courtyard, then Varney's whistle in imitation of the earl's signal when visiting the countess.

Instantly the door of her chamber swung open, and, standing a moment upon the threshold, Amy in her fleecy-white drapery wavered like a drifting cloud, then moved forward upon the balcony; the trapdoor fell, and the lovely marble face with its lustrous brown eyes sank into the darkness of death.