Chapter 1
_ CHAPTER I
When the accident happened, Cordova was singing the mad scene in _Lucia_ for the last time in that season, and she had never sung it better. _The Bride of Lammermoor_ is the greatest love-story ever written, and it was nothing short of desecration to make a libretto of it； but so far as the last act is concerned the opera certainly conveys the impression that the heroine is a raving lunatic. Only a crazy woman could express feeling in such an unusual way.
Cordova‘s face was nothing but a mask of powder, in which her handsome brown eyes would have looked like two holes if she had not kept them half shut under the heavily whitened lids； her hands were chalked too, and they were like plaster casts of hands, cleverly jointed at the wrists. She wore a garment which was supposed to be a nightdress, which resembled a very expensive modern shroud, and which was evidently put on over a good many other things. There was a deal of lace on it, which fluttered whe

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