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STORIES OF
laida/ all eyes were turned upon the Abbess. She sat with head bent forward, motionless, almost rigid. Those nearest sprang to her support, for they believed her to be smitten with some sudden illness; but with a resolute effort she recovered herself. Rising tocher full height, with more than her wonted dignity, she thanked the vocalist who had furnished so glorious a finale to the concert. A smile was on her countenance—a smile of proud, triumph-ant joy such as none remembered ever to have seen there before. The faded features were transfigured. And then, by a flash of intuition, the singer and those around him recognized the never once suspected truth, never once suspected during all those forty years. That ancient, old-world lady, who seemed to have halted and stood still upon the threshold of the century, had suddenly assumed a new and startling aspect, for the magic of imagination, which can in a moment's space obliterate the trace of years, had banished each deeply-graven furrow, to picture her as once more the lovely, graceful maiden, the ornament of a court, the idol of a poet's dream, the beloved, the adored, the broken-hearted Adelaida!
" Long years ago, in the one golden summer of her young life and during that tour amid the
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