The widow walked nervously up the room and then stood confronting her sister-in-law.  The elder Mrs. Aylmer had just risen from a sofa on which she had been lying.  Mrs. Aylmer the less was quite right in prophesying her sister-in-law would be a large woman in the future; she was a large woman now, stoutly built and very fat about the face.  Her face was pasty in complexion without a scrap of color in it, and her eyes were of too light a blue to redeem the general insipidity of her appearance; but when she spoke that insipidity vanished, for her lips were very firm, and were apt to utter incisive words, and at such moments her pale blue eyes would flash with a light fire which was full of sarcasm, and might even rise to positive cruelty.