The room was large and fairly comfortable, but contained nothing

breakable, having been tenanted at one time by a strenuous lunatic, who

had considerately died after his immediate family and relations had worn

themselves into their several graves, taking care of him. But Eleonora

Harrigan knew nothing of the history of the room while she occupied it.

So, no ghost disturbed her restless slumberless nights, consumed in

watching and listening.

She was not particularly distressed because she knew that it would not be

possible for her to sing again until the following winter in New York. She

had sobbed too much, with her face buried in the pillow. Had these sobs

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been born of weakness, all might have been well; but rage had mothered

them, and thus her voice was in a very bad way. This morning she was

noticeably hoarse, and there was a break in the arietta. No, she did not

fret over this side of the calamity. The sting of it all lay in the fact

that she had been outraged in the matter of personal liberty, with no act

of reprisal to ease her immediate longing to be avenged.

Nora, as she stood in the full morning sunlight, was like to gladden the

eyes of all mankind. She was beautiful, and all adjectives applicable

would but serve to confuse rather than to embellish her physical

excellence. She was as beautiful as a garden rose is, needing no defense,

no ramparts of cloying phrases. The day of poets is gone, otherwise she

would have been sung in cantos. She was tall, shapely, deep-bosomed,

fine-skinned. Critics, in praising her charms, delved into mythology and

folk-lore for comparisons, until there wasn't a goddess left on Olympus or

on Northland's icy capes; and when these images became a little shop-worn,

referred to certain masterpieces of the old fellows who had left nothing

more to be said in oils. Nora enjoyed it all.

She had not been happy in the selection of her stage name; but she had

chosen Eleonora da Toscana because she believed there was good luck in it.

Once, long before the world knew of her, she had returned home from Italy

unexpectedly. "Molly, here's Nora, from Tuscany!" her delighted father had

cried: who at that time had a nebulous idea that Tuscany was somewhere in

Ireland because it had a Celtic ring to it. Being filled with love of

Italy, its tongue, its history, its physical beauty, she naïvely

translated "Nora from Tuscany" into Italian, and declared that when she

went upon the stage she would be known by that name. There had been some

smiling over the pseudonym; but Nora was Irish enough to cling to it. By

and by the great music-loving public ceased to concern itself about her

name; it was her fresh beauty and her wonderful voice they craved to see

and hear. Kings and queens, emperors and empresses, princes and

princesses,--what is called royalty and nobility in the newspapers freely

gave her homage. Quite a rise in the world for a little girl who had once

lived in a shabby apartment in New York and run barefooted on the wet

asphalts, summer nights!




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