Her fair complexion and pink cheeks had lost none of their freshness.

Her smooth auburn hair was as soft and bright as it had been when she had braided it preparatory to a Barlingford tea-party in the days of her spinsterhood.

She was a pretty, weak little woman, whose education had never gone beyond the routine of a provincial boarding-school, and who believed that she had attained all necessary wisdom in having mastered Pinnock's abridgments of Goldsmith's histories and the rudiments of the French language.

She was a woman who thought that the perfection of feminine costume was a moire-antique dress and a conspicuous gold chain.

She was a woman who considered a well-furnished house and a horse and gig the highest form of earthly splendour or prosperity.
This was the shallow commonplace creature whom Philip Sheldon had once admired and wooed.