I was down in the drawing-room in my black dress--(how comfortable I felt in it, how hateful that brown barége was, after all)--when the door was opened, and a large, stoutly-made woman, most richly dressed, came in. She had a quantity of grizzly grey hair, which was turned back from her expansive forehead; a cap of almost every colour in the rainbow bedizened her head, she wore diamond pendants in her ears, and had a flashing diamond brooch fastening the front of her dress. Her complexion was high, she had a broad mouth and a constant smile. She walked straight up to Jane Mullins.