Camilla, age 10

Camilla, on the other hand, was neither pretty nor poised. As a child, she wore thick glasses, she was tall and, to put it gently, she was always a bit ungainly.

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"She was a very good athlete, but she didn't do well at the sort of things that Mother would have appreciated," Mary Margaret said.

At a time when it was expected that young women of her class and status would master equestrian skills, Camilla was thoroughly terrified of horses, Mary Margaret said. "She had been thrown off of her pony," she said. "I think she was about eight, and that was the end of it." Instead, Camilla, dubbed "Butch" by her classmates at Windsor, gravitated toward less-refined sports: field hockey, basketball, and above all, baseball. These were all decidedly proletarian endeavors, "which, of course, scandalized our mother," Mary Margaret said.

Camilla at Mary Margaret's Wedding

By the time Camilla was in her teens, she had become lonelier and, perhaps, Mary Margaret would only later realize, more desperate. "She had a few friends, but none of them close. The only real companion she had was our father," Mary Margaret said.

Even now, so many years later, Mary Margaret's eyes misted slightly when she spoke of her father. "He was sweet and darling and loving. A dear. We all adored him. Everybody did. Not just Camilla."

Arthur T. Lyman

But Camilla had a special closeness to her father. It seemed to Camilla that Arthur T. Lyman was the only person in the whole world who loved her without condition. He accepted her eccentricities. He didn't seem bothered by her adolescent nocturnal prowling through the winding corridors of the old house at Ricefields, even when they continued into adulthood.

He didn't mind that she didn't care for horses, and at time when most fathers remained distant, he attended every single field hockey or basketball or baseball game she played in, always cheering on his youngest daughter, regardless of the outcome of the game.

Arthur Lyman holding baby Camilla

He even privately shared her passion for the ill-fated Boston Red Sox, Mary Margaret said, though he realized that it was probably the better part of valor not to talk statistics with his daughter when Mousy was within earshot.

"I know what you're thinking," Mary Margaret said. "It wasn't like that at all. There was nothing...nothing at all unusual about her relationship with her father. There was nothing there at all except a lonely person who knew that there was one person in the world who loved her more than anything else."

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