In the drawing-room at Heston Park two ladies were seated.

One was a well-preserved woman of fifty, with a large oblong face, good features, a double chin, and abundant gray hair arranged in waved _bandeaux_ above a forehead which should certainly have implied strength of character, and a pair of challenging black eyes.

Lady Barnes moved and spoke with authority; it was evident that she had been accustomed to do so all her life; to trail silk gowns over Persian carpets, to engage expensive cooks and rely on expensive butlers, with a strict attention to small economies all the time; to impose her will on her household and the clergyman of the parish; to give her opinions on books, and expect them to be listened to; to abstain from politics as unfeminine, and to make up for it by the strongest of views on Church questions.

She belonged to an English type common throughout all classes--quite harmless and tolerable when things go well, but apt to be soured and twisted by adversity.
And Lady Barnes, it will be remembered, had known adversity.

Not much of it, nor for long together; but in her own opinion she had gone through "great trials," to the profit of her Christian character.