He looked much younger than Maria's mother, his wife.

People said that Harry Edgham's wife might, from her looks, have been his mother.

She was a tall, dark, rather harsh-featured woman.

In her youth she had had a beauty of color; now that had passed, and she was sallow, and she disdained to try to make the most of herself, to soften her stern face by a judicious arrangement of her still plentiful hair.

She strained it back from her hollow temples, and fastened it securely on the top of her head.