d listened to the music in the morning, or on the long
piazza in the afternoon and looked at the driving in the street, or in
the vast parlors by night, where all the other ladies were, and they
felt that they were of the best there. But they knew nobody, and Mrs.
Mandel was so particular that Mela was prevented from continuing the
acquaintance even of the few young men who danced with her at the
Saturday-night hops. They drove about, but they went to places without
knowing why, except that the carriage man took them, and they had all
the privileges of a proud exclusivism without desiring them. Once a
motherly matron seemed to perceive their isolation, and made overtures
to them, but then desisted, as if repelled by Christine's suspicion,
or by Mela's too instant and hilarious good-fellowship, which expressed
itself in hoarse laughter and in a flow of talk full of topical and
syntactical freedom. From time to time she offered to bet Christine
that if Mr. Fulkerson was only there they would have a good time; she
wondered what they were all doing in New York, where she wished herself;
she rallied her sister about Beaton, and asked her why she did not write
and tell him to come up there.

Mela knew that Christine had expected Beaton to follow them. Some banter
had passed between them to this effect; he said he should take them in
on his way home to Syracuse. Christine would not have hesitated to write
to him and remind him of his promise; but she had learned to distrust
her literature with Beaton since he had laughed at the spelling in a
scrap of writing which dropped out of her music-book one night. She
believed that he would not have laughed if he had known it was hers;
but she felt that she could hide better the deficiencies which were not
committed to paper; she could manage with him in talking; she was too
ignorant of her ignorance to recognize the mistakes she made then.
Through her own passion she perceived that she had some kind of
fascination for him; she was graceful, and she thought it must be that;
she did not understand that there was a kind of beauty in her small,
irregular features that piqued and haunted his artistic sense, and a
look in her black eyes beyond her intelligence and intention. Once he
sketched her as they sat together, and flattered the portrait without
getting what he wanted in it; he said he must try her some time in
color; and he said things which, when she made Mela repeat them, could
only