The musicians
obliged with appropriately lugubrious wailings and thumpings, and
the Baroness seized the opportunity to make a dash to the
dressing-room to effect certain repairs in her make-up.
Cassandra, nervous but resolute, came down to the footlights and,
like one repeating a carefully learned lesson, flung her remarks
straight at the audience:
"I see woe for this fair country if the brood of corrupt, self-
seeking, unscrupulous, unprincipled politicians " (here she named
one of the two rival parties in the State) "continue to infest and
poison our local councils and undermine our Parliamentary
representation; if they continue to snatch votes by nefarious and
discreditable means--"
A humming as of a great hive of bewildered and affronted bees
drowned her further remarks and wore down the droning of the
musicians. The Baroness, who should have been greeted on her
return to the stage with the pleasing invocation, "Oh,
Clytemnestra, radiant as the dawn," heard instead the imperious
voice of Lady Thistledale ordering her carriage, and something
like a storm of open discord going on at the back of the room.
. . . . . . . . .
The social divisions in the County healed themselves after their
own fashion; both parties found common ground in condemning the
Baroness's outrageously bad taste and tactlessness.
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