She was dressed in the most perfect Parisian fashion, from the crown of her fur toque to the tips of her little shoes; but she had never learned to speak three words of French correctly.

She informed everybody of the fact that afternoon, laughing with the keenest enjoyment of her remarkable stupidity; it seemed that her _role_ was to be remarkable in everything.

However that may have been, in less than half an hour seven out of those eleven men were gathered round her chair in the corner; two out of the seven were the rector and Sir Peter Morley, and Mrs.Nevill Tyson was talking to all of them at once.
Mrs.Nevill Tyson--she was an illusion and a distraction from head to foot; her beauty made a promise to the senses and broke it to the intellect.

Coil upon coil, and curl upon curl of dark hair, the dark eyes of some ruminant animal, a little frivolous curve in an intelligent nose, a lower jaw like a boy's, the full white throat of a woman, and the mouth and cheeks of a child just waked from sleep.

Tyson had escaped one misfortune that had been prophesied for him.