lia is away. I presume Philo's
invited now?"

"So she says," assented Hepatica, studying her note again, with a care
not to look at me which made me quite as self-conscious as if she had.
Why the dear people will all persist in thinking things which do not
exist! Of course I was glad the Philosopher was to be there. What
enjoyment is not the keener for his friendly sharing of it? But what of
that? Has it not been so for many years?--and will be so, I trust, for
all to come.

* * * * *

Hepatica and I packed with care, selecting the most expensive things we
owned. 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. But the Judge, at whose right
hand I sat, diverted me so successfully by means of his own most
interesting personality and delightful powers of conversation, that in
time I forgot both forks and butler, and was only conscious of the
length of the dinner by the sense, toward its close, of having had more
to eat than I wanted.

[Illustration: "Camellia herself was as exquisitely arrayed as ever"]

"They have this sort of thing every night of their unfortunate lives,
to a greater or less degree," murmured the Skeptic in my ear, as the men
came into the impressively decorated room where Camellia and Hepatica
and I were talking over common memories. "The gladdest man to get into
his summer camp in Maine is the Judge, and the life of absolute abandon
to freedom he lives there ought to teach his wife a thing or two-