In her own youth painted faces had been the ghastly privilege of a class of womankind of which the women of society were supposed to know nothing.

Persons who showed their ankles and rouged their cheeks were to be seen of an afternoon in Bond Street; but Lady Diana Angersthorpe had been taught to pass them by as if she saw them not, to behold without seeing these creatures outside the pale.

And now she saw her own dearest friend, a person distinctly within the pale, plastered with bismuth and stained with carmine, and wearing hair of a colour so obviously false and inharmonious, that child-like faith could hardly accept it as reality.
Forty years ago Lady Kirkbank's long ringlets had been darkest glossiest brown, to-day she wore a tousled fringe of bright yellow, piquantly contrasting with Vandyke brown eyebrows.
It took Lady Maulevrier some moments to get over the shock.

She drew a chair to the fire and established her friend in it, and then, with a little gasp, she said: 'I am charmed to see you again, Georgie!' 'You darling, I was sure you would be glad.

But you must find me awfully changed--awfully.' For worlds Lady Maulevrier could not have denied this truth.