The Duchess had been the penniless daughter of an Irish clergyman, married _en secondes noces_ for her somewhat queer and stimulating personality, by an epicurean duke, who, after having provided the family with a sufficient store of dull children by an aristocratic mother, thought himself at liberty, in his declining years, to please himself.

He had left her the dower-house--small but delicately Jacobean--and she was now nearly as old as the Duke had been when he married her.

She was largely made, shapeless, and untidy.

Her mannish face and head were tied up in a kind of lace coif; she had long since abandoned all thought of a waist; and her strong chin rested on an ample bosom.
As soon as Mrs.Barnes was seated near her hostess, Lelius--who had an intimate acquaintance, through their pictures, with half the great people of Europe--began to observe the Duchess's impressions.

Amused curiosity, first.