Herrick's chagrin and discomfiture were extreme. She paid no further attention to him. Dropping her head on her clenched hands, "Oh! Oh! Oh!" she said.
Mrs. Hope came out of a room at the back, and, passing Herrick with as little ceremony as even her daughter had displayed, caught hold of Christina's wrists and shook her sharply.
"Christina!" she exclaimed. "Christina! Now, there has been quite enough of this!"
Christina did not seem to resent this summary treatment. She began to sob more quietly, until she suddenly burst forth, "Where is she, then? Can you tell me that? Where is she?"
"I don't care where she is!" cried poor Mrs. Hope. "Or, at least, now you know very well what I mean, my dear. I can't have you going on in this hysterical way all the time, when you've rehearsals to attend to. Nancy probably went away to get out of all the disagreeable notoriety that you've got into. And I'm sure she's very well off."
"Where is she, then?" Christina wailed. She seemed to have an extraordinary capacity for sticking to her point. "With all the police in New York looking for her, where is she?"
"Well, she hasn't been murdered, as you seem to think! If she had been, she'd be found. If people kill people, they have to do something with their bodies! But if people are alive, they can do something with themselves!"
Christina shuddered.
"Now, my dear," said her mother, "it's very high time that we apologized to Mr. Herrick, who must think us mad. But let me tell you this. I am not going to have you go on the stage in a month looking like your own ghost and all unstrung. I'm not going to have the play ruined by you, and have you turn Mr. Wheeler and all of them into your enemies. It would be better for them to get some one else. You don't sleep, you won't eat, and you sit brooding all the time, as if you were looking at nightmares. Well, if you don't get some kind of hold over yourself within the next day or two, I shall tell Mr. Wheeler that you are nervously unfit to be entrusted with a part, and I am taking you away."
Christina sat for an appreciable time without moving. Then she slowly lifted her face and smiled at Herrick with her wet eyes. "We have treated you to a strange scene," she said. "It is our bad hour. But—sometimes—we can be really nice." She held out her hand. Then, becoming aware of herself sitting on the steps, and of her mother and Herrick standing before her, "'Have we no chears?'" she quoted; and, springing up, she led the way into the little white room.