Miss Heredith was an excellent, if somewhat terrific, specimen of the class.
She was tall and massive, with a large-boned face, tanned red with country air, shrewd grey eyes looking out beneath thick eyebrows which met across her forehead in a straight line (the Heredith eyebrows) and a strong, hooked nose (the Heredith falcon nose).

But in spite of her massive frame, red face, hooked nose, and countrified attire, she looked more in place with the surroundings than the frailer and paler specimens of womanhood to whom she was dispensing tea.

There was a stiff and stately grace in her movements, a slow ceremoniousness, in her politeness to her guests, which seemed to harmonize with the seventeenth-century setting of the moat-house garden.
At the moment the ladies were discussing an event which had been arranged for that night: a country drive, to be followed by a musical evening and dance.

The invitations had been issued by the Weynes, a young couple who had recently made their home in the county.

The husband was a popular novelist, who had left the distractions of London in order to win fame in peace and quietness in the country.