she wished to
show Miss Vance that she was (not) anxious, and because 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 sh