'Will you try one now?'
'Don't ask me to sing a solo. I should break down at once; but if you will allow me to join you in a duet, I'll try to manage it.'
Katie turns over a book of manuscript music, and they fix on Then and Now.
'The words are dreadfully stupid, but the air is pretty,' asserts Lady Dillworth, as she runs over the prelude:
We heard the tower bells pealing
On that soft summer night,
Your hand was linked with mine, love;
Your heart, like mine, was light.
We whispered low together
Of that hope and of this;
While far above, the joyous bells
Seemed echoes of our bliss.
Again those bells are pealing;
We hear them now, and sigh;
No longer can their chimes, love,
Blend with our thoughts of joy.
Our lives for aye are parted;
And on the wintry air,
Those crashing sounds but haunt us now,
Like echoes of despair.
The two voices ring harmoniously and plaintively through the rooms. One could almost imagine the singers are actually using the 'past to give pathos' to the words. But nothing is further from their thoughts. Katie is only deciding that, after all, Walter's voice will 'do' with hers in the duets of the charade; and Walter is wishing—just a little—that Miss Delmere had retained the part of Lucy, as at first proposed.
[ELECTRICITY AS A LIGHT-PRODUCER.]
It has long been the opinion of scientific people that in electricity we have a power the development of which is only at present in its infancy. The marvellous details of our telegraphic system constantly remind us that there is a mysterious fluid round about us which can to a certain extent be made subservient and obedient to the will of man. This familiarity with that which would a few centuries ago have been stigmatised as the outcome of sorcery, has led the ignorant to place a blind belief in its powers. The subtle fluid has in fact taken the place of the necromancer's wand, and is believed by many to be capable of anything or everything. The electrician is thus credited with much that does not of right belong to his domain, and the wildest speculations are occasionally indulged in as to what next he will do for us. That electricity will prove of far more extended use than the present state of knowledge allows, we all have vague anticipations, and among these is the reasonable hope that it will some day supersede coal-gas as a means of artificial illumination. We propose, by a brief review of the present position of electrical research, to point out how far such a hope is justified by facts.