She was handsome, piquante, well dressed; she said smart things, even ill-natured things, with a little languid air, which lent them additional point. Her laced petticoats were the admiration and wonder of all the women; her wonderful little feet the admiration of all the men. She was so well painted that it would have seemed heartless to wish her washed clean; and the aroma of maréchale powder which she enhaled was beneficent to the nostrils of some, loathsome to others. Her adherents were chiefly men, to whom she was always gracious. Her own sex, as a rule, did not love her. Madame Martineau never said ill of any one, but she was known to clear her throat when appealed to as to her handsome pensonnaire. Old Madame Clinchaut detested her; even Miss Baring, who wished to be on good terms with all her fellow-boarders, instinctively avoided the cruel-tougued lady of the languid eyes. There was a freezing surface between them, over which each skated at meal-time; nothing more.
Miss Baring was a plain little woman of nine and twenty, pale, with intelligent eyes, imperfectly apprehended through a pince-nez, a figure like a knife-board, and rusty hair, which did her the injustice of looking as though it had not been brushed. In reality, I believe she brushed her hair almost as much as that unfortunate Eliza Westbrook whom Hogg has immortalized so painfully in his records of Shelley. But a rough-and-tumble arrangement was the one tribute to picturesqueness this cleanly and sensible woman paid to the art which both she and her brother pursued. She was energetic, thorough, unimaginative, with a fund of good sense, and occasionally
