Hepatica scrutinized the Skeptic's linen critically before she
put it in. When we departed we were as correctly attired as time and
thought could make us. When we arrived we were doubly glad that this
was so, for the sight of the butler, admitting us, gave us much the same
feeling of being badly dressed that Camellia's own presence had been
wont to do.
Camellia herself was as exquisitely arrayed as ever, but she looked
considerably older than I had expected. I wondered if constant
engagements with her tailor and dressmaker, to say nothing of incessant
interviews with those who see to the mechanism of formal entertaining,
had not begun to wear upon her. But she was very cordial with us, and
her husband, the Judge, was equally so. He was considerably her
senior--quite as much so, I decided, as the Professor was Dahlia's--but
on account of Camellia's woman-of-the-world air the contrast was not so
pronounced.
We sat through an elaborate dinner, during which I suffered more or less
strain of anxiety concerning my forks.
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