and always detested the savor.

Gradually a conviction came upon me that Ottilia ATE A GREAT DEAL.

I do not dislike to see a woman eat comfortably. I even think that an
agreeable woman ought to be friande, and should love certain little
dishes and knick-knacks. I know that though at dinner they commonly take
nothing, they have had roast-mutton with the children at two, and laugh
at their pretensions to starvation.

No! a woman who eats a grain of rice, like Amina in the "Arabian
Nights," is absurd and unnatural; but there is a modus in rebus: there
is no reason why she should be a ghoul, a monster, an ogress, a horrid
gormandizeress--faugh!

It was, then, with a rage amounting almost to agony, that I found
Ottilia ate too much at every meal. She was always eating, and always
eating too much. If I went there in the morning, there was the horrid
familiar odor of those oniony sandwiches; if in the afternoon, dinner
had been just removed, and I was choked by reeking reminiscences of
roast-meat. Tea we have spoken of. She gobbled up more cakes than any
six people present; then came the supper and the sandwiches again, and
the egg-flip and the horrible rum-punch.

She was as thin as ever--paler if possible than ever:--but, by heavens!
HER NOSE BEGAN TO GROW RED!

Mon Dieu! how I used to watch and watch it! Some days it was purple,
some days had more of the vermilion--I could take an affidavit that
after a heavy night's supper it was more swollen, more red than before.