he night. The
Baroness and Clovis seemed to have sunk their mutual differences, and
between them dominated the scene to the partial eclipse of all the
other characters, who, for the most part, seemed well content to remain
in the shadow. Even Agamemnon, with ten years of strenuous life around
Troy standing to his credit, appeared to be an unobtrusive personality
compared with his flamboyant charioteer. But the moment came for
Cassandra (who had been excused from any very definite outpourings
during rehearsals) to support her role by delivering herself of a few
well-chosen anticipations of pending misfortune. The musicians obliged
with appropriately lugubrious wailings and thumpings, and the Baroness
seized the opportunity to make a dash to the dressing-room to effect
certain repairs in her make-up. Cassandra, nervous but resolute, came
down to the footlights and, like one repeating a carefully learned
lesson, flung her remarks straight at the audience:

"I see woe for this fair country if the brood of corrupt, self-seeking,
unscrupulous, unprincipled politicians" (here she named one of the two
rival parties in the State) "continue to infest and poison our local
councils and undermine our Parliamentary representation; if they
continue to snatch votes by nefarious and discreditable means--"

A humming as of a great hive of bewildered and affronted bees drowned
her further remarks and wore down the droning of the musicians. The
Baroness, who should have been greeted on her return to the stage with
the pleasing invocation, "Oh, Clytemnestra, radiant as the dawn," heard
instead the imperious voice of Lady Thistledale ordering her carriage,
and something like a storm of open discord going on at the back of the
room.

* * * * *

The social divisions in the County healed themselves after their own
fashion; both parties found common ground in condemning the Baroness's
outrageously bad taste and tactlessness.

She has been fortunate in sub-letting for the greater part of her seven
years' lease.

THE PEACE OF MOWSLE BARTON

Crefton Lockyer sat at his ease, an ease alike of body and soul, in the
little patch of ground, half-orchard and half-garden, that abutted on
the farmyard at Mowsle Barton. After the stress and noise of long
years of city life, the repose and peace of the hill-begirt homestead
struck on his senses with an almost dramatic intensity. Time and space
seemed to lose