“Why bring in Claridge’s? ...?” the Ambassadress murmured, prodding with the tip of her shoe a decaying tortoiseshell leaf; “but anyway,” she reflected, “I’m glad the proceedings fall in winter, as I always look well in furs.”
And mentally she was wrapped in leopard skins and gazing round the crowded court saluting with a bunch of violets an acquaintance here and there, as her eyes fell on Mrs Chilleywater seated in the act of composition beneath a cedar-tree.
Mrs Chilleywater extended a painful smile of welcome which revealed her pointed teeth and pale-hued gums, repressing, simultaneously, an almost irresistible inclination to murder.
“What!... Another writ?” she suavely asked.
“No, dear; but these legal men will write....”
“I love your defender. He has an air of d’Alembert sympathetic soul.”
“He proposes pleading Claridge’s.”
“Claridge’s?”
“Its respectability.”
“Are hotels ever respectable,—I ask you. Though, possibly, the horridest are.”