Harry, partly grieved at perceiving the accustomed sunshine in his wife’s pretty face overcast, partly irritated at what he imagined to be the sulkiness of her manner; annoyed at his friend’s egotistic chatter, which he felt was disgusting Alice, and which he could not contrive to check (seeing that the obtuseness of Tom Rattleworth’s faculties rendered him totally impervious to a hint); and generally provoked by the change from his usual state of careless, light-hearted happiness to his present uncomfortable frame of mind--a change which he rightly enough attributed in a great measure to his own hastiness and mismanagement, almost lost his temper. This he displayed by rating the lad who assisted Wilkins, until he reduced that unhappy juvenile to such a pitch of nervousness and general mental debility, that, having inveigled his mistress into sugaring instead of peppering a broiled turkey’s leg, and replenished the Champagne glasses from a bottle of bitter ale, he was sent out of the room in disgrace. But in this mortal life (which would be quite unendurable if such were not the case) all things sooner or later come to an end--and dull dinners are no exceptions to the rule--thus, after the dessert had been placed on the table, Alice, having finished her half-glass of sherry and nibbled a fragment of some little vegetable absurdity preserved in candied sugar, and looking like a geological specimen rather than a sweetmeat, reckoned she had sufficiently fulfilled her duty as hostess, and was watching for an opportunity to escape and go and be wretched comfortably by herself, when Tom Rattleworth, addressing her especially, began:--