He found Mrs. Hope, but not Christina, and the elder lady received him almost with tears. "She is out driving, Mr. Herrick; she is out driving about all by herself and she won't come home. She is in one of her tantrums and all about Mr. Wheeler—a fine actor, of course, but why bother?"
Herrick had never seen the poor lady so ruffled. "It was such a beautiful reception," she told him, "all the best people. She got there late. She always does. You can't tell me, Mr. Herrick, that she doesn't do it on purpose to make an entrance. All the time I was brushing her up after the rehearsal she stood with her eyes shut, mumbling one line over and over from her part. Nobody could be more devoted to her success than I am, but it got on my nerves so I stuck her with a hairpin and I thought she would have torn her hair down. 'What are these people to me?' she said. 'Or I to them.' You know how she goes on, Mr. Herrick, as if she were actually disreputable, instead of being really the best of girls. Then, again, she's so exclusive it seems sometimes as if she really couldn't associate with anybody, except the Deutches! She likes well enough to fascinate people, all the same. She behaved beautifully after she got there; and oh, Mr. Herrick, you can't imagine how beautiful she looked! Surely, there never was anything so lovely as my daughter!"
"Can't I?" Herrick exclaimed.
"Well, every one just lay down flat in front of her. Even Mr. Ten Euyck. Yes, he was there. I trembled when they should meet. You know, he has his inspectorship now. He wants to give her a lunch on board his yacht! It was a triumph. Christina was very demure. But by-and-by I began to feel a trifle uneasy. You know that soft, sad look she's got?—it's so angelic it just melts you—when she's really thinking how dull people are! Well, there, I saw it beginning to come! And about then they had got rid of all but the very smartest people, just the cream, you know, for a little intimacy! We were all getting quite cozy, when some one asked Christina how she could bear to play love-scenes with a man like Wheeler—of course, Mr. Herrick, it is annoying, but they will ask things like that; they can't help it."
"And Miss Hope?"
"She looked up at them with the sugariest expression I ever saw and asked them why, and they all began reminding her of the—well, you know! And I must say, when you come to think of his—ah—affairs—! And they talked about how dear Miss So-and-So had refused to act with him in amateur theatricals, he said such rough things! And how lovely Christina was, and how hard it was on her, and all the time I could see Christina clouding up."
Herrick, with his eyes on the rug, smilingly murmured, "Wave, Munich, all thy banners wave! And charge, with all thy chivalry!"
"Well, Mr. Herrick, she stood up and looked all round her with that awful stormy lower she has, and then, in a voice like one of those pursuing things in the Greek tragedies, 'I!' she said, 'I am not worthy to kiss his feet!' Oh, Mr. Herrick, why should she mention them? There are times when she certainly is not delicate!"
Herrick burst out laughing. He thought Christina might at least have exhibited some sense of humor. "And was the slaughter terrible?"
"Why, Mr. Herrick, what could any one say? She looked as if she might have hit them. She shook the crumbs off her skirt, as if they were the party, and then she said good-by very sweetly, but coldly and sadly, like Mary Queen of Scots going to execution, and left. Mr. Herrick, I don't know where to hide my head!"