"What are their names?"
"Brutus and Caesar. The Judge is nothing if not classical."
As they mounted the front steps the faint notes of a guitar sounded from the front room.
"Confound Isabelle and her eternal twanging!" muttered Louis, as he fumbled for his latch-key. "It would be a more orthodox welcome if you found your relations waiting for you with open arms, but the Hildreth family is not given to gush. Isabelle will tell you it is not good form. So we keep our emotions hermetically sealed and stowed away under decorous lock and key, polite society having found them inconvenient things to handle, partaking of the nature of nitroglycerine, you know, and liable to spontaneous combustion."
He opened the door as he spoke and Evadne followed him into the hall. She shivered, although a warm breath of heated air fanned her cheek. The atmosphere was chilly.
Marion, hurried forward to greet her, followed more leisurely by
Isabelle and her mother, who touched her lips lightly to her forehead.
"I hope you have had a pleasant journey, my dear, although you must find our climate rather stormy. I think you might as well let the girls take you at once to your room and then we will have dinner."
"Where is the Judge?" inquired Louis.
"Detained again at the office. He has just telephoned not to wait for him. He is killing himself with overwork."
To Evadne the dinner seemed interminable and she found herself contrasting the stiff formality with the genial hospitality of her father's table. She saw again the softly lighted room with its open windows through which the flowers peeped, and heard his gay badinage and his low, sweet laugh. Could she be the same Evadne, or was it all a dream?