mentality, and made her always take, as by right divine, the leading
part in the histrionic entertainments with which the cultured of
Riseholme beguiled or rather strenuously occupied such moments as could
be spared from their studies of art and literature, and their social
engagements. Indeed she did not usually stop at taking the leading
part, but, if possible, doubled another character with it, as well as
being stage-manager and adapter, if not designer of scenery. Whatever
she did--and really she did an incredible deal--she did it with all the
might of her dramatic perception, did it in fact with such earnestness
that she had no time to have an eye to the gallery at all, she simply
contemplated herself and her own vigorous accomplishment. When she
played the piano as she frequently did, (reserving an hour for practice
every day), she cared not in the smallest degree for what anybody who
passed down the road outside her house might be thinking of the
roulades that poured from her open window: she was simply Emmeline
Lucas, absorbed in glorious Bach or dainty Scarletti, or noble
Beethoven. The latter perhaps was her favorite composer, and many were
the evenings when with lights quenched and only the soft effulgence of
the moon pouring in through the uncurtained windows, she sat with her
profile, cameo-like (or like perhaps to the head on a postage stamp)
against the dark oak walls of her music-room, and entranced herself and
her listeners, if there were people to dinner, with the exquisite
pathos of the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata. Devotedly as she
worshipped the Master, whose picture hung above her Steinway Grand, she
could never bring herself to believe that the two succeeding movements
were on the same sublime level as the first, and besides they "went"
very much faster. But she had seriously thought, as she came down in
the train today and planned her fresh activities at home of trying to
master them, so that she could get through their intricacies with
tolerable accuracy. Until then, she would assuredly stop at the end of