"She's ugly enough for a genius," whispered Frank to Hester. Hester put her finger on her lip to command his silence.
Frank's observation was just. Miss Blundell was not handsome. Of an age so uncertain that it is denominated a "certain age," she wore her black hair in a girlish crop. On a low, square, rugged forehead sparkled a Sévigné. Wondering eyebrows overarched two sunken eyes; a graceless nose and insignificant mouth did not tempt an artist to fix them on his canvass. In accordance with the juvenility of her style, she was robed in white muslin, displaying a scraggy tawny neck, fierce and protuberant shoulder-blades, and disreputable arms. Certainly nothing but great skill could exonerate such ugliness.
She began by a rattling sweep over the strings, and an audacious display of elbows. Having thus fixed attention, she paused and sought inspiration from the ceiling. Genius always does. I know not what mystic influence there may be in a white-washed plafond; but it appears there is something of the kind, since rhymes, tropes, and melodies are drawn therefrom. Miss Blundell found music there. A few seconds of silent invocation brought down the muse, and she flogged the harp into the Gustavus galop.
There are players of no feeling, and players of too much feeling. Miss Blundell was of the latter class. She despised execution (with some private reasons for so doing), and thought music should have a soul. Feeling was all in all with her, and feeling she threw into everything. Even this mad, giggling, joyous, whirling, rattling galop was not free from her sentimental caprice. She began con spirito,—
which suddenly changed, at the fourth bar, from allegro vivace to an ad libitum rallentando, expressive of the deepest emotion, the player's eyes thrown upwards as if in rapt devotion. These notes,
died away in a "billowy ecstacy of woe," immediately succeeded by a fiery allegro, which again subsided into a pathetic rallentando: