A Social Meteor — page 200: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

190 _ A SOCIAL METEOR. Dinner was a gloomy meal for her. Served though it was by liveried servants, and upon the finest china, her food was as bitter herbs in her mouth. She had eaten nothing since the day before, and her head was aching painfully; still, she could not force a solid morsel down her throat. She took two spoonfuls of soup, and trifled with a piece of fish, but it was an exertion for her to swallow, so she gave up trying in disgust, and sat back in her chair watching her husband empty his plates, with an expression of contempt upon her face. “You seem to have an excellent appetite,” she remarked, sweetly. “Yes, my dear, I never allow anything to inter- fere with my meals,” he returned, helping him- self a second time to terrapin. “But you’re not playing a very good knife and fork to-night. What’s the matter? aren’t you well? ‘Kat, drink and be merry,’ you know. It applies very well in our case, doesn’t it?” and he poured out a glass of champagne with a little giggle. | “What I can’t understand,” she began, when the servant had left the room, “is, how you manage to take this so coolly. You say you are ruined, and yet you can sit here and joke as if (E (0) Eomicbooks