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Bianca May
Singer from the 1896 short story "The Masked Singer" in Miss Ayr of Virginia, & other stories by Julia Magruder. Protagonist and musician Edward Randall assumes a masked singer in the street is his beautiful neighbor Bianca May, but she sings with a weird edge in her voice that puts him off. So he's glad when he discovers that the masked street singer was actually Bianca's mother, Mrs. May. Bianca's father and mother raised money playing and singing in the street to give Bianca a proper musical education. Bianca has a beautiful voice, and has a successful debut concert.
Across the wild confusion of these frantic, angry thoughts a sound fell, a sound so sweet, so powerful, so exquisite, that it was like the voice of peace, speaking with a strong, commanding influence to his soul. It was a voice that satisfied, for the first time in his life, the utmost ideal of Randall's soul! Not only was it the perfect method that he knew, but the voice, itself, was so gloriously exquisite, so fine, so clear, so passionately sweet, that his soul was wrapt in ecstacy. It was almost too cruelly sweet. Randall shuddered, and, when the song ended, he dropped his face in his hands and gave a sort of sob.
Then there came from the audience an absolute storm of applause. So tempestuous and excited was it, that the girl was evidently divided between pleasure and fright, and when Mensenn came to her and led her from the stage, she was so visibly shaken that she could not, at once, respond to the encore.
