On the whole, with her poetic furbelows and her misshapen, intelligent little face, she was, when you knew her, a decidedly interesting woman.

She was naturally shy, and if she had been born a beauty, she would (having no vanity) probably have remained shy.

Now, she was both diffident and importunate; extremely reserved sometimes with her friends, and strangely expansive with strangers.

She despised her husband; despised him too much, for she had been perfectly at liberty not to marry him.

She had been in love with a clever man who had slighted her, and she had married a fool in the hope that this thankless wit, reflecting on it, would conclude that she had no appreciation of merit, and that he had flattered himself in supposing that she cared for his own.