Black Oxen by Gertrude Atherton

When Clavering and Dinwiddie arrived at the Ogden house Judge Trent was already there and mixing cocktails in the library. He was a large man who must have had a superb figure before it grew heavy. He wore the moustache of his generation and in common with what was left of his hair it glistened like crystal. His black eyes were still very bright and his full loose mouth wore the slight smirk peculiar to old men whose sex vanity perishes only in the grave. Beside him stood a man some ten years younger who was in the graying period, which gave him a somewhat dried and dusty look; but whose figure was still slender and whose hard outlines of face were as yet unblurred by flesh. They were, of course, faultlessly groomed, but if met in the wilds of Africa, clad in rags and bearded like the jungle, to the initiate they still would have been New Yorkers.

"Come in! Come in! " cried the Judge heartily. "Madame Zattiany will be down in a minute -- she prefers to be called Madame Zattiany, by the way. Thinks titles in America are absurd unless wearers were born to them -- more particularly since continental titles today are worth about as much as rubles and marks. Mr. Clavering, you know Mr. Osborne? Madame Zattiany kindly permitted me to bring him as she was having a little party. Families old friends."