"Dr. Maccanfrae, physician and philanthropist, missionary and moralist, and the dearest man in the world, besides," she replied. "He does more good in a day than twenty Poor Boards do in a week, and has more genuine Christian charity in his soul than a score of average parsons, although he is an evolutionist and a pantheist combined."

"A most flattering description," said Duncan. "I hope he deserves such adulation."

"He certainly merits it all," added Wainwright.

Dr. Maccanfrae entered the box and Walter Sedger improved the opportunity to slip away and visit some friends. The Doctor spoke to Mrs. Sanderson, then moved toward the corner occupied by Florence Moreland, while Duncan dropped quietly into the seat left vacant by Mr.

Sedger.

"What can bring so industrious a man as Dr. Maccanfrae to the opera?"

said Florence as the Doctor took the seat beside her.

"The opera itself, Miss Florence. I am devoted to music and never lose an opportunity of hearing it well rendered. Isn't Tamagno doing grandly to-night?"

Her reply was interrupted by the appearance of a tall, plainly dressed woman, who, pencil and paper in hand, entered the box door. Her face was refined, though careworn, and bore the mark of better days. She hesitated for a moment, as though realizing fully her intrusive calling, then advanced toward Duncan. "May I ask you, sir, to give the names of your party for the _Morning Stentor_?" she finally said.

"What does she mean?" said Duncan, turning to Mrs. Sanderson for an explanation.

"It is one of the peculiarities of Chicago life," she replied. "It is for to-morrow's society column."

"And do you give them the information?" he asked.

"O, yes, it is better to have it right, as they publish it anyway, right or wrong," she replied, and then she told the reporter the names.

"Might I trouble you to describe your dress?" was the next question asked. "I am sorry to be so intrusive, but it is the city editor's orders, and we have to do the best we can."

"You are a woman, and understand such matters, so I think you had better do that yourself," Mrs. Sanderson replied.

The reporter thanked her and withdrew. When she had gone Duncan said wonderingly: "We have society reporters in New York, but they never go quite so far as to ask one to describe oneself. Who reads such particulars anyway?"

"Ask Dr. Maccanfrae, he is wiser than I," she replied.

"Dr. Maccanfrae, who should you say read the society columns of the newspapers?" he asked.

"People who expect to find their names in print, and people who think their names ought to be in print, to say nothing of those who read society columns, as they do society scandals, in order to get a reflection of the tinsel and tarnish of an unknown world."

"That must include a great portion of newspaper readers," replied Duncan.

"Precisely; that is why society scandals and fashions occupy so large a portion of our papers," the Doctor replied. "But there comes the conductor, so I must get back to my place."

"Won't you remain here, Doctor?" said Mrs. Sanderson.

"No, I thank you. I only came in to pay my respects, and, as I have a musical friend with me, I must get back to him."

The Doctor hurried away and the little man away down in front lifted his baton. Ninety musicians watched the beat of the first bar, and, as the baton fell, sixty bows moved in unison, and trumpets, horns, trombones, and reeds, added their strains, while the act drop slowly rose disclosing the great stage, gorgeously set as Otello's audience-chamber.

"I must tell you an amusing tale about 'Otello,'" whispered Mrs.

Sanderson to Duncan Grahame. "I was in Rome when the opera was brought out there, and went with the American minister and his wife. Revere was their name and they came from Tallaha.s.see. He had been a congressman, but she had never been away from home until she went as the wife of our representative in Austria, so you can imagine her ignorance of the world. She watched the opera quietly until she noticed that the black Otello bore some relation to the white Desdemona. That made her hem and fidget, but when Otello embraced his wife, she put up her fan in disgust, and said indignantly to me: 'How outrageous! I a.s.sure you such conduct would not be tolerated in Tallaha.s.see.'"

Grahame laughed, and then they listened to the grand music of Verdi for a while, but it was not the opera which inspired their interest, for the subtle spell of similarity seemed to arouse the sympathy of kindred taste. Bright phrases and pleasing words flashed between them, and quickly another act pa.s.sed. Again the people rose and talked, again visitors came to the box and uttered conventional insipidities. Finally Roswell Sanderson himself returned. He had pa.s.sed the evening in the manager's office with some friends, but his wife did not even express a curiosity to know it. The curtain rose on the last act. "Come," said Wainwright to Duncan, "we must go back to our seats. Good-night, Mrs.

Sanderson." "Good-night, Mr. Grahame." "_A demain_," said Duncan, and he was off. Another act of the opera was rendered, then the great house was slowly emptied, and hundreds of carriages bore their occupants away. The lights went out, the weary artists hurried home, the Auditorium was left cold, silent and deserted.

CHAPTER V.

A CHALLENGE.

Marion Sanderson's surroundings kept her in a continual state of irritation. Her fancy created an ideal life with harmonious environments and sympathetic friends, but the reality was what she termed "an utterly commonplace existence." From early childhood her parents and acquaintances had jarred upon her, so that her fanciful mind had carried on incessant warfare with her prosaic surroundings. Her father and mother were respectable representatives of practical Calvinism, who, endeavoring to make their child a pillar of the Church, had persistently combated her natural tendencies. For days at a time, during her younger years, the poor child would obediently follow the routine of prayer prescribed for her until worn out by the drastic Scotch tenets; then rebellious tears would flow, and she would permit some natural sentiments to escape from her impulsive heart. Such outbursts most frequently occurred on Sunday, and they invariably called from her mother's lips the time-tried reproof: "I think, Marion, you forget the day. Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy." Resentful and disgusted the child would expostulate, only to be frigidly denounced as one possessed of an evil spirit; then she would rush to her room and remain for hours sobbing and yearning for sympathy. "Fox's Book of Martyrs,"

"The Church at Home and Abroad," and "Baxter's Saints' Rest" were her literary diet, but she managed to devour, surrept.i.tiously, romance after romance, and her greatest pleasure was to live over, in fancy, the lives of those she had read about. Thus for fifteen years the restless child tugged unsuccessfully at the parental tethers till relief came from an unexpected quarter.

Marion's mother, despairing of her child's spiritual welfare, decided curiously enough, to send her abroad to the care of her sister-in-law, the wife of the United States minister to France. This aunt, being a woman of broad sympathies and experience, questioned the girl about her education, and, finding that it had been confined to the three R's and the Westminster catechism, decided to send her to school. So Marion was forthwith ensconced in a select _pension_ patronized by the Faubourg St.

Germain n.o.bility. Here a new life was opened to Marion, and, freed from her childhood's restraints, she eagerly sought companionship with these girls of a different world. She learned a new language and new sentiments, and though novels were forbidden in the school, the pages of Balzac, Merimee, Sand and Gautier, surrept.i.tiously read, fed her fancy with new impressions and created new aspirations. Florence Moreland was the only other American in the school, and to her Marion was attracted by the very oppositeness of her nature. The frank practicality and keen perception of Florence fascinated her, and although the two girls disagreed on most subjects, a warm affection always kept their hearts united.

Marion left the _pension_ at the age of seventeen. By that curious process of expatriation which few but Americans can successfully undergo, her childhood's sentiments had been removed, and European ideas had been engrafted in their place. Her aunt, who during Marion's _pension_ days had vibrated between Paris and the Riviera, now took her for a few months of travel. Florence was invited to accompany them, and after making the conventional summer-garden tour of the Continent, they went to Nice for the winter. There the two girls studied Italian and mixed in the quasi Anglo-European society of the place--certainly not the best for a girl first to enter.

The transfer of Marion's uncle to the English mission brought them to London, and they were just enjoying the excitement of a first season when Marion's parents ordered her home. A child when she left Chicago, she was now a woman. Her home, which had been uncongenial before, was now intolerable. Her life became a continual struggle against the prejudices of her parents. She longed to pull down the sombre drawing-room curtains and pitch the stiff-backed, haircloth chairs out of the window; but her father, though a millionaire, would brook no change. Still she struggled on, demanding an alteration in the dinner hour, wine at table and the discarding of the family carry-all. "Do you want me to open the house to Satan?" her mother asked in horrified tones. "I want you to be civilized beings and not anchorites," she replied. Her mother's friends were practically limited to the communicants of the Knox Presbyterian Church, but such a society only served to exasperate her more. To her the men were stupid slaves of business and the women narrow-minded prudes. There was a progressive set whose companionship she desired, but in her mother's mind they were the Devil's chosen, and were consequently forbidden the house. In desperation Marion sought relief and it came in the shape of a husband.

Roswell Sanderson was vice-president of her father's bank, rich, prominent, and,--what was more to her,--liberal-minded. He asked her to be his wife, and, without a.n.a.lyzing her feelings further than the sense of gratefulness which she felt, she accepted him. After a brief engagement they were married and her new life began.

Marion's husband was a country boy who had been sent to an Eastern college; and possessing American energy and perception in a marked degree, he rapidly won a place in the first rank of Chicago business men. He was a man of broad ideas and sympathies, but lacked the delicate veneer of manners which distinguishes the cosmopolite from the provincial. In Marion's eyes this fault soon became greatly magnified.

His flat p.r.o.nunciation and Western inflection, his cordial, unstudied manner and hearty laughter so mortified her that in the presence of those who were capable of recognizing his shortcomings, her manner became apologetic. His open-hearted frankness, which made him a friend of high and low, so rasped her ideas of convention that all sense of sympathy was destroyed, and her married life was no more congenial than that at home had been. Roswell never criticised her actions, so she was enabled to seek relief in society. She saw the gradual enlargement and improvement of Chicago but she was able to pick flaws in the struggles of society to break the shackles of provincialism, and she longed to hasten the _metropolizing_ process. Unlike Florence Moreland she could not admire the vigor and freshness of Western life, but permitted herself to suffer from intense mortification at the faults which others would have pa.s.sed unnoticed. Marriage and society having failed to supply the happiness she desired, she turned to books. Her selections of reading, however, were destined to intensify her restlessness, for in the pages of Daudet, Bourget and de Maupa.s.sant she found the anomalies of human weakness painted in brilliant and exculpatory colors. The clever portraitures of these subtle a.n.a.lysts created a spirit which caused her to explain her eccentricities of feeling by comparison with the emotions described in their yellow-covered records. She became a disciple of the modern philosophy of introspection, which, unlike that of the stoic and anchorite, is not intended to humble desire, but to create a morbid craving for the unattainable. Recognizing that the absorbing pa.s.sion of her life was yet to come, she scrupulously a.n.a.lyzed each impulse she felt and resolved it into infinitesimal atoms of feeling, which again were subjectively compared with the minutest details of her a.n.a.lytical romances. The consequence was that her emotions were kept in a state of continual irritation, and ordinary pleasures becoming less and less gratifying, a desire for new excitements and experiences was created. It was in such a state of mind that Florence Moreland had found her, and, since the latter's arrival in Chicago she had striven unsuccessfully to dispel the spirit of depression which had taken possession of her friend.

On the afternoon of the day following the performance of "Otello,"

Florence, cold and rosy from tobogganing, burst into the drawing room.

She expected to find Marion in one of her moods, and she was astonished to find her dressed to go out and carelessly strumming on the piano.

Marion looked up, and, seeing Florence, burst into laughter at her tousled locks and red cheeks. "You had better stand over the register and get thawed out," Marion remarked cheerfully; then, thumping the piano again, she continued: "How was the slide?"

"Capital! and hundreds of people there," was Florence's reply. Then, wondering at Marion's sudden change of spirits, she added, "Are you going to the McSeeney's tea?"

"Yes; I intend to take Mr. Grahame."

"I suppose I shall have to get there the best way I can."

"You can take the brougham. What do you think of him?"

"Who, the brougham?"

"No; Mr. Grahame, you silly."

"O, he is like many New Yorkers, one-third clothes and two-thirds conceit. I asked him if he thought he should like Chicago, and, knowing I was from the East, he confidently replied: 'It is not New York, you know, but I suppose one can get used to anything in time.'"

"I don't care, I like him," Marion replied.

"Hush, here he comes," said Florence hurriedly.

A servant announced Mr. Grahame, and as Duncan entered, Marion said in a somewhat surprised tone, "Are you always so prompt?"