The effect of this
cool appropriation of Norah's identity to theatrical purposes on the
audience--who only saw results--asserted itself in a storm of applause
on Magdalen's exit. She had won two incontestable triumphs in her first
scene. By a dexterous piece of mimicry, she had made a living reality
of one of the most insipid characters in the English drama; and she
had roused to enthusiasm an audience of two hundred exiles from the
blessings of ventilation, all simmering together in their own animal
heat. Under the circumstances, where is the actress by profession who
could have done much more?
But the event of the evening was still to come. Magdalen's disguised
re-appearance at the end of the act, in the character of "Lucy"--with
false hair and false eyebrows, with a bright-red complexion and patches
on her cheeks, with the gayest colors flaunting in her dress, and the
shrillest vivacity of voice and manner--fairly staggered the audience.
They looked down at their programmes, in which the representative
of Lucy figured under an assumed name; looked up again at the stage;
penetrated the disguise; and vented their astonishment in another round
of applause, louder and heartier even than the last.
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