Ned Stillman was in the audience, also. Claire saw him sitting off at the side. Indeed, she spotted him on the very moment of her entrance upon the stage. She had been nervous until his friendly smile warmed her into easy confidence; and though, while she played, her back had been toward him, she felt the glow of his sympathy. As Lily Condor and she swept back upon the stage for their rather perfunctory applause, and still more perfunctory bouquets provided by the committee, Claire could see him gently tapping his hands in her direction, and she was surprised when the usher handed her a bouquet of dazzling orchids.
"They must be for you," Claire said, innocently enough, to Mrs. Condor. "I don't find any name on them."
"That shows that you've got a discreet admirer, at any rate," Lily Condor returned with that bantering sneer which Claire was just beginning to notice. And the thought struck her at once that Stillman had sent the flowers. She was pleased, but also a little annoyed to think he had so deliberately ignored Mrs. Condor.
The Flints were there, too; Flint looked uncomfortable and warm in his scant full-dress suit and his wife frankly ridiculous in a low-cut gown that exhibited every angle of a hopelessly scrawny neck. Claire did not see them until she was leaving the stage, and she smiled as she saw Flint lean over and pick up the opera-glasses from his wife's lap. But this was not all. In a far corner sat Miss Munch and her cousin, Mrs. Richards, their ferret eyes darting busily about and their tongues clicking even more rapidly. Doubtless Flint had invested in a number of tickets at the office for business reasons and passed them around for any of the office force who felt a desire to see society at close range.
Claire had not meant to stay beyond one or two numbers following her own appearance, but she kept yielding to Mrs. Condor's insistent suggestions that she "stay for just one more," until she discovered, to her dismay, that it was past midnight. The last artists were taking their places upon the stage. Claire resigned herself to the inevitable and sat out the remainder of the performance. She was making a quick exit into the dressing-room when she came face to face with her aunt. Mrs. Ffinch-Brown betrayed her confusion by the merest lift of the eyebrows, and she stepped back as if to get a clearer view of her niece, as she said with an air of polite surprise:
"You—here?"
Claire carried her head confidently. "I was on the program," she returned, consciously eying the turquoise pendants.
Mrs. Ffinch-Brown rested a closed fan against her left ear as if to screen at least one of the earrings from Claire's frank stare. "Oh, how interesting! I must have missed you—I came in late. It's rather odd. I thought I knew everybody on the program.... I helped arrange it."
"Well," Claire smiled, "I wasn't what you would call one of the head-liners. I played Mrs. Condor's accompaniments."
"That accounts for it ... my not knowing, I mean. I dare say your mother is better, otherwise you wouldn't be here."