)
(_For a while he sits silent, peacefully encompassed in the thoughts
with which she has provided him; then very slowly he speaks.)_
GLADSTONE. Well, if it pleases her--I suppose it must be right!
CURTAIN
Possession
Dramatis Personae
JULIA ROBINSON _Sisters_
LAURA JAMES _Sisters_
MARTHA ROBINSON _Sisters_
SUSAN ROBINSON _Their Mother_
THOMAS ROBINSON _Their Father_
WILLIAM JAMES _Husband to Laura James_
HANNAH _The family servant_
Part Two
The Everlasting Habitations
"All hope abandon ye who enter here."
"_Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that,
when ye jail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations_"
Possession
A Peep-Show in Paradise
SCENE.--_The Everlasting Habitations_
_It is evening (or so it seems), and to the comfortably furnished
Victorian drawing-room a middle-aged maid-servant in cap and apron brings
a lamp, and proceeds to draw blinds and close curtains. To do this she
passes the fire-place, where before a pleasantly bright hearth sits,
comfortably sedate, an elderly lady whose countenance and attitude suggest
the very acme of genteel repose. She is a handsome woman, very conscious
of herself, but carrying the burden of her importance with an ease which,
in her own mind, leaves nothing to be desired. The once-striking outline
of her features has been rounded by good feeding to a softness which is
merely physical; and her voice, when she speaks, has a calculated
gentleness very caressing to her own ear, and a little irritating to
others who are not of an inferior class.
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