The Dinner was one of those corpseless Funerals, stage-managed by a respectable Lady with a granite Front who had Mayflower Corpuscles moving majestically through her Arterial System.
Loretta was marooned so far from the Live Ones that she couldn't wig- wag for Help. Her C. Q. D. brought no Relief.
She threw about three throes of Anguish before they escaped to the private Gambling Hell.
Here she tucked back her Valenciennes and proceeded to cop a little
Pin-Money at the soul-destroying game known as Bridge.
At 11.30 she led a highly connected volunteer Wine Pusher out into the Conservatory and told him she did not think it advisable to marry him until she had learned his First Name.
Shortly after Midnight she blew, arriving at headquarters just in time to participate in a Chafing-Dish Jubilee promoted by only Brother, just back from the Varsity.
She approached the Porcelain in a chastened mood that Sabbath morning.
She was thinking of the Night Before and of playing cards for Money.
She remembered the glare of Light for overhead and the tense, eager
Faces peering above the Paste-Boards.
Then she recalled, with a sharp catch of the Breath and a little tug of Pain at the Heart, that she had balled herself up at one Stage and got dummied out of a Grand Slam.
"It would have meant a long pair of the Silk Kind," thought she, as she sighed deeply and turned the cold Faucet.
After Breakfast, she took a long Walk up the Avenue as a Bracer.