moment,
then glides through it, leaving behind a much-deceived husband, who will
not hear the sound of her solitary weeping, or see any signs of it on her
face when presently he comes to read Herrick at her bedside_.)

(_For a while he sits silent, peacefully encompassed in the thoughts
with which she has provided him; then very slowly he speaks.)_

GLADSTONE. Well, if it pleases her--I suppose it must be right!

CURTAIN

Possession

Dramatis Personae

JULIA ROBINSON _Sisters_
LAURA JAMES _Sisters_
MARTHA ROBINSON _Sisters_
SUSAN ROBINSON _Their Mother_
THOMAS ROBINSON _Their Father_
WILLIAM JAMES _Husband to Laura James_
HANNAH _The family servant_

Part Two

The Everlasting Habitations

"All hope abandon ye who enter here."

"_Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that,
when ye jail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations_"

Possession

A Peep-Show in Paradise

SCENE.--_The Everlasting Habitations_

_It is evening (or so it seems), and to the comfortably furnished
Victorian drawing-room a middle-aged maid-servant in cap and apron brings
a lamp, and proceeds to draw blinds and close curtains. To do this she
passes the fire-place, where before a pleasantly bright hearth sits,
comfortably sedate, an elderly lady whose countenance and attitude suggest
the very acme of genteel repose. She is a handsome woman, very conscious
of herself, but carrying the burden of her importance with an ease which,
in her own mind, leaves nothing to be desired. The once-striking outline
of her features has been rounded by good feeding to a softness which is
merely physical; and her voice, when she speaks, has a calculated
gentleness very caressing to her own ear, and a little irritating to
others who are not of an inferior class. Menials like it, however. The
room, though over-upholstered, and not furnished with any more individual
taste than that which gave its generic stamp to the great Victorian
period, is the happy possessor of some good things. Upon the mantel-shelf,
backed by a large mirror, stands old china in alternation with alabaster
jars, under domed shades, and tall vases encompassed by pendant ringlets
of glass-lustre. Rose-wood, walnut, and mahogany make a well-wooded
interior; and in the dates thus indicated there is a touch of Georgian.
But, over and above these mellowing features of a respectable ancestry,
the annunci