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After the evening at the Albion Chrystie set him down as "hopeless," and when he refused two dinner invitations, said they ought to have asked him to wait on the table and then he would have accepted. To this gibe Lorry made no answer, but that night before the mirror in her own room, she addressed her reflection with bitterness: "Why should any man like me?
It was only a more fashionable way of doing her hair and a becoming dress, but the young man saw it as a growing splendor, removing her to still remoter distances. She herself was so nervous that she kept looking helplessly at Chrystie, hoping that that irrepressible being would burst into her old-time sprightliness. But Chrystie had her own reasons for being oppressed.
No she wouldn't have done it, she couldn't something more than a joke had made Chrystie lie to her. A sumptuous figure in her glistening dress, she moved about, rose and sat, jerked back the curtains, picked up and dropped the silver ornaments on the bureau.
The Alston house had been cleaned and set in order from the cellar to the roof and in its dustless, shining spaciousness Lorry sat down and faced her duties. The time had come for her to act. Chrystie must take her place among her fellows, be set forth, garnished and launched as befitted the daughter of George Alston.
Her eye on Lorry was steady and questioning, also slightly scornful. Lorry was abashed by it; she felt that she ought not to have asked, and in confusion stammered, "Yes." Chrystie moved to the bed and threw on her furs. Her ill-humor was gone, though she was still a little scornful and rather grandly forbearing.
What she felt was kept very secret, but even if it hadn't been there was no one to notice, certainly not Chrystie, nor Aunt Ellen. The only other person near enough to notice was Fong, and it wasn't Fong's place to help at least to help in an open way. One morning in the kitchen, when he and "Miss Lolly" were making the menu for a new dinner, he had said, "Mist Bullage come this time?"
She sighed at the memory of the Barlows' superior advantages and the sigh sounded like a groan of reproach in Lorry's ears. Innocently, unconsciously, unaccusingly, Chrystie was rubbing in the failure of her stewardship. She combed at the ends of her hair, her eyes blind to its burnished brightness. "Would you like to have a party here?" she said in a solemn voice.
If she thought her sister had fallen in love with Fong, she couldn't have appeared more shocked and incredulous. "Care for him?" said Chrystie, pulling out the bureau drawer and clawing about in it for her gloves. "Well, I care for him in some ways, and then I don't care for him in other ways." "I don't mean that, I mean really care." "Do you mean, am I in love with him?"
Achieving graceful greetings he inwardly deplored it, noting as he spoke how shy she was and how she sought to hide it under a crude sprightliness. There was a shyness full of charm, a graceful gaucherie delightful to watch as the gambolings of young animals. But Chrystie was too conscious of herself and of him to be anything but awkward and constrained.
Aunt Ellen, startled from surreptitious slumber, gave an unnaturally loud assent to which Chrystie paid no attention. "It's the new opera at the Albion and Pancha Lopez is " She threw out her hands and looked at the ceiling, words inadequate. "She's never done anything so good before," Lorry said. "All in red and orange, and coins everywhere.
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