Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/117

 —a mother's heart set to music, one might say, dear Sister. See, you shall take this chair a little out of the way; and you, my lambkin, shall remove yourself on your fat legs to a nice corner. Mother is going to do an opera for Sister Cecilia—acting, recitative, arias, situations, and all except the hot, glaring footlights. And I will play some of the other parts for you, Sister. Thus you will get an idea of the music and the opera as a whole."

She moved about the room energetically as she spoke, pushing the chairs out of the way, arranging a mise-en-scène to please her, and hastily outlining the story of the opera to the nun as she worked. Her eyes were as bright and her cheeks as flushed as those of her little girl. It was a new experience for the famous prima donna—this impromptu performance in the music-room of the great cloister, and she enjoyed it. No vast audience had ever roused in her the sensation that filled her now. Holstein, like many of her class, was spoiled, capricious, and unreasonable, but the best that was in her came to the surface as she faced those two—her daughter and the nun. She knew that she was giving to the silent singer of the cloister a supreme hour of life.

"First," she said, as she took her place at