Arthur seldom lost his perceptive and reasoning faculties, and having read descriptions of state dinners and breakfasts, bethought himself that had his wife and himself been in truth chief guests, they would have been paired off with host and hostess. Moreover, although there was a vast deal of talking at table and he did his conscientious best to make conversation with the velvet-clad mummy consigned to him, he had all the time the feeling of being left out in the cold. Nobody addressed him directly in word, or indirectly by glance, and at length, in gentlemanly despair of diverting the attention of his fair companion from her plate to himself, he let her eat in peace and pleased himself by comparing the rosy, piquant face of his wife with the bismuth-and-rouge-powdered visages to the right, left, and front of her. Susie seemed to be getting on swimmingly. The man next to her was chatting gayly, and evidently recognized a responsive spirit in his fair companion. How easily and naturally she met his advances, and how gracefully she fitted into her novel position! What were pomps and vanities to him accorded with her tastes. Again he thought how niggardly would have been the refusal to allow her to take the place she so adorned. Not even love’s eye penetrated the doughty visor she kept jealously closed throughout the meal. To begin with, she _took the wrong fork for the raw oysters_! As course succeeded course, the dreadful implement, in style so unlike those left beside other plates, actually _grinned_ at her with every prong. Everybody must be aware of the solecism and deduce the truth that this was her first dinner party. She was sure that she caught the waiters exchanging winks over the fork, and that out of sheer malice, they allowed the tell-tale to lie in full sight. The apprehension that she would eventually be compelled to use the frail absurdity or leave untouched something—meat or game, perhaps—assailed her. While she hearkened to the flippant nothings her escort mistook for elegant small-talk, and plucked up heart for repartee, hot and cold sweats broke out all over her. Had she obeyed inclination that approximated frenzy at times, she would have crept under the table and rolled over on the floor in anguished mortification. If her sleight-of-hand had been equal to the rash adventure, she would have pocketed the wretched bugbear in desperation akin to that which makes the murderer fling far from him the weapon with which the deed was done. When the ghastly petty torture was ended by the removal of the obnoxious article, and the substitution of one larger, plainer, and less obvious, the poor woman could have kissed the perfunctory hand that lifted the incubus from her soul.