Not by any means a beauty, her pretty face and tiptilted nose, her perennial cheerfulness, birdlike vivacity and gift of repartee had made her the center of attraction for years.
But she, like Cumberland Ludlow, had refused to grow old gracefully and with resignation.

She had put up an equally determined fight against age, and it was only when the remorseless calendar proved her to be sixty-five that she resigned from the struggle, washed the dye out of her hair and the make-up from her face and retired to that old house.
Not even then, however, did she resign from all activity and remain contented to sit with her hands in her lap and prepare herself for the next world.

This one still held a certain amount of joy, and she concentrated all the vitality that remained with her to the perfect running of her house.

At eleven o'clock every morning the tap of her stick on the polished floors was the signal of her arrival, and if every man and woman of the menage was not actively at work, she knew the reason why.

Her tongue was still as sharp as the blade of a razor, and for sloppiness she had no mercy.