she had
some vague notion of the distinction of arriving late at any sort of
entertainment. Mrs. Mandel insisted upon the difference between this
musicale and an ordinary reception; but Christine rather fancied
disturbing a company that had got seated, and perhaps making people rise
and stand, while she found her way to her place, as she had seen them do
for a tardy comer at the theatre.

Mela, whom she did not admit to her reasons or feelings always, followed
her with the servile admiration she had for all that Christine did;
and she took on trust as somehow successful the result of Christine's
obstinacy, when they were allowed to stand against the wall at the back
of the room through the whole of the long piece begun just before they
came in. There had been no one to receive them; a few people, in the
rear rows of chairs near them, turned their heads to glance at them, and
then looked away again. Mela had her misgivings; but at the end of the
piece Miss Vance came up to them at once, and then Mela knew that she
had her eyes on them all the time, and that Christine must have been
right. Christine said nothing about their coming late, and so Mela did
not make any excuse, and Miss Vance seemed to expect none. She glanced
with a sort of surprise at Conrad, when Christine introduced him; Mela
did not know whether she liked their bringing him, till she shook hands
with him, and said: "Oh, I am very glad indeed! Mr. Dryfoos and I have
met before." Without explaining where or when, she led them to her
aunt and presented them, and then said, "I'm going to put you with some
friends of yours," and quickly seated them next the Marches. Mela liked
that well enough; she thought she might have some joking with Mr. March,
for all his wife was so stiff; but the look which Christine wore seemed
to forbid, provisionally at least, any such recreation. On her part,
Christine was cool with the Marches. It went through her mind that they
must have told Miss Vance they knew her; and perhaps they had boasted
of her intimacy. She relaxed a little toward them when she saw Beaton
leaning against the wall at the end of the row next Mrs. March. Then she
conjectured that he might have told Miss Vance of her acquaintance
with the Marches, and she bent forward and nodded to Mrs. March across
Conrad, Mela, and Mr. March. She conceived of him as a sort of hand of
her father's, but she was willing to take them at their apparent social
valuation for the