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Nevertheless he was vain beyond measure, and made the most of himself on all occasions. The music was fine, for the amateurs, feeling that they had a critical audience, did their best. Her splendid voice and exquisite touch doubled the admiration her beauty and diamonds had excited, and Mrs. Von Brakhiem basked in still stronger reflected light.
Von Brakhiem, bent upon shining among the foremost, though with a borrowed lustre, assigned Christine a most prominent part. She half shrank from it, for it recalled unpleasant memories; but she could not decline without explanations, and so entered into the affair with a sort of recklessness.
Von Brakhiem and her party quite took possession of the Ludolph mansion, and often made it echo with gayety. On the evening of the day that Dennis buried his mother, Ernst went over at Mr. Ludolph's request to carry a message. He found the house the scene of a fashionable revel.
Wearily and despondingly she rode back to the elegant home in which she found so little enjoyment. Whom should she met there but Mrs. Von Brakhiem from New York, bound westward with a gay party on a trip to the Rocky Mountains and California? They had stopped to spend a few days in Chicago, and were determined to take Christine on with them. Her father strongly seconded the plan.
Had it been otherwise she might soon have taken, in her morbid, reckless state, a path to swift and remediless ruin, as many a poor creature all at war with happiness and truth has done. Mrs. Von Brakhiem parted with her regretfully. Where would she find such another ally in her determined struggle to be talked about and envied a little more than some other pushing, jostling votaries of fashion?
There were music and dancing in the parlors, and from the dining-room the clink of glasses and loud peals of laughter proved that this was not Christine's ideal of an entertainment as she had portrayed it to her father on a former occasion. In truth, she had little to do with the affair; it was quite impromptu, and Mr. Ludolph and Mrs. Von Brakhiem were responsible for it.
On the same day the family of his old New York partner arrived at the house on their return from the Catskills. Mrs. Von Brakhiem gladly received Christine under her care, feeling that the addition of such a bright star would make her little constellation one of the most brilliant in the fashionable world. The ladies of the house were now immersed in the excitement of an amateur concert. Mrs.
Even her only friend, Susie Winthrop, drifted away. One other, who might have been But she could think of him only with a shudder now. All the rest seemed indifferent, or censorious, or, worse still, to be using her, like Mrs. Von Brakhiem and even her own father, as a stepping-stone to their personal ambition. Christine could not see that she was to blame for this isolation.
She would, in short, "face out" the events of the past evening simply and solely on the ground that she had not been well, and permit no questions to be asked. Cold and self-possessed, she came down to a late breakfast. Mrs. Von Brakhiem, and others who had been introduced, joined her, but nothing could penetrate through the nice polished armor of her courteous reserve.
Suddenly she sprang from the piano, darted through the low-cut open window near, and a moment later ordered her startled maid from the room, turned the key, and was alone. This Mrs. Von Brakhiem took up and repeated with endless variations.
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