ion, performed with more gusto and enthusiasm than
customary, gave so much satisfaction that it had to be repeated after
noisy and prolonged applause, and then Miss Cordova appeared at the
side of the platform, dressed in Spanish costume and carrying
castanets. The opera of "Carmen," at that time quite new, had been
performed in some small towns of the United States by a "scratch"
company, including Pauline's acquaintance and--to show that Art is a
reality, and some people born into it, at their best in it and unfit
for anything else--the lady was greatly changed, not only in
Ringfield's eyes, but in her own. The greenish-yellow hair looked dull
gold by lamplight; her eyes gleamed blackly from their blue
crystallized lids (the bath of indigo being a stage device known to all
devotees of the art), and her dancing, which immediately commenced to
her own castanets and a subdued "pizzicato" from the two violins, was
original and graceful, and free from any taint of vulgarity. Her
draperies of handsome black and yellow stuffs were high to the throat
and reached to her ankles; her expression was dreamy, almost sad; one
would have said she was figuring in some serious rite, so dignified her
mien, so chaste and refined her gestures. If Bizet has idealized the
heroine of Prosper-Merimee's crude but strong little story, Sadie
Cordova idealized in her turn the orthodox tempestuous, unhappy Carmen
of the modern stage. The beauty of the music with its rhythmic
measured beat, and the grace of her swaying changeful poses, riveted
all eyes and ears, and Ringfield, to whom such an exhibition was
altogether new, was absorbed in watching this woman he had endeavoured
not to despise, and whom he certainly would have exhorted in his most
earnest fashion to flee St. Ignace directly, had he known that she was
a person who had experimented more than once in matrimony, not having
waited for the death of her first husband before she married the
second, and that she had two children living.

The next on the programme was a baritone solo from a young habitant,
another of the Tremblay family, a portion of a Mass in which he was ill
at ease, and over-weighted; this apparently not mattering to the
populace, he was encored, and returned to sing, in his own simple
fashion and without accompaniment, one of the many beautiful melodies
known to him from his childhood--A Chanson Populaire.

Quand un Chretien se determine
A voyager,
Faut b