Adelle, as has been amply admitted in these pages, was neither beautiful nor compelling. But she was very different indeed from the small, shabby girl of fourteen. She was taller, with a well-trained figure that showed the efforts of all the deft maids and skillful dressmakers through which it had passed. She was dressed in the very height of the prevailing fashions--a high-water mark of eccentricity that Judge Orcutt rarely encountered in the staid circles of the good city of B----. Her skirt was slit so as to accentuate all there was of hips, and the bodice did the same for the bust. And the hat--well, even in New York its long aigrette and daring folds had caused women to look around in the streets. She carried in one hand a large bunch of mauve orchids and wore an abundance of chains and coarse, bizarre jewelry. Her face was still pale, and the gray eyes were almost as empty of expression as they had been seven years before. But altogether Adelle was _chic_ and modern, as she felt with satisfaction, of a type that might find more approval in Paris than in America, where a pretty face and fresh coloring still win distinction. She was _new_ all over from head to foot, of a loud, hard newness that gave the impression of impertinence, even defiance. This was accentuated by Adelle's new manner--the one that had grown upon her ever since her elopement. Then she had taken a great step in defiance of authority, and to support her self-assertion she had put on this defiant manner, of conscious indifference to expected criticism. It was the note of her period, moreover, to flaunt independence, to push things to extremes. Needless to say that in Adelle's case it had been further emphasized by the episode with the customs officers. Here again she had defied recognized authorities and got into trouble over it; indeed, had become mildly notorious in the newspapers. The only way she could carry off her mistake and her notoriety was, like a child, by exaggerating her nonchalance. Thus she had met President West and the other officers of the trust company. Alone--for as usual Archie had evaded the disagreeable--she had met them in their temple and felt their frigid disapprobation of her and all her ways. She had carried it off by forcing her note, "throwing it into the old boy," as she described it to Archie, with all the loud clothes, the loud manners she had at her command, and she knew that she had succeeded in making a very bad impression upon the trust company's president. She felt that she did not care--he was nothing to her. In the same defiant mood and with the same "war-paint" she had entered Judge Orcutt's court and answered his preliminary questions. But she felt ill at ease, rather miserable under his kindly, heart-searching gaze. She wished that she hadn't: she wanted to blush and drop her eyes. Instead she returned his look out of her still, gray eyes with a fascinated stare.