An actress, even the most gifted, has no such 'following.' The greatest dramatic sopranos that ever sing Brunhilde and Kundry enjoy no such popularity.

It belongs exclusively to the nightingale primadonnas, whose voices enchant the ear if they do not always stir the blood.

It may be explicable, but no explanation is at all necessary, since the fact cannot be disputed.
To this amazing popularity Margaret Donne had now attained; and she was known to the matinee girls' respectful admiration as Madame Cordova, to the public generally and to her comrades as Cordova, to sentimental paragraph-writers as Fair Margaret, and to her friends as Miss Donne, or merely as Margaret.

Indeed, from the name each person gave her in speaking of her, it was easy to know the class to which each belonged.
She had bought a house in London, because in her heart she still thought England the finest country in the world, and had never felt the least desire to live anywhere else.

She had few relations left and none whom she saw; for her father, the Oxford scholar, had not had money, and they all looked with disapproval on the career she had chosen.