Spooner of Spoon Hall

Adelaide Palliser was a tall, fair girl, exquisitely made, with
every feminine grace of motion, highly born, and carrying always
the warranty of her birth in her appearance; but with no special
loveliness of face. Let not any reader suppose that therefore she was
plain. She possessed much more than a sufficiency of charm to justify
her friends in claiming her as a beauty, and the demand had been
generally allowed by public opinion. Adelaide Palliser was always
spoken of as a girl to be admired; but she was not one whose
countenance would strike with special admiration any beholder who did
not know her. Her eyes were pleasant and bright, and, being in truth
green, might, perhaps with propriety, be described as grey. Her nose
was well formed. Her mouth was, perhaps, too small. Her teeth were
perfect. Her chin was somewhat too long, and was on this account the
defective feature of her face. Her hair was brown and plentiful;
but in no way peculiar. No doubt she wore a chignon; but if so she
wore it with the special view of being in no degree remarkable
in reference to her head-dress. Such as she was,--beauty or no
beauty--her own mind on the subject was made up, and she had resolved
long since that the gift of personal loveliness had not been
bestowed upon her. And yet after a fashion she was proud of her own
appearance. She knew that she looked like a lady, and she knew also
that she had all that command of herself which health and strength
can give to a woman when she is without feminine affectation.

Lady Chiltern, in describing her to Phineas Finn, had said that she
talked Italian, and wrote for the _Times_. The former assertion
was, no doubt, true, as Miss Palliser had passed some years of her
childhood in Florence; but the latter statement was made probably
with reference to her capability rather than her performance. Lady
Chiltern intended to imply that Miss Palliser was so much better
educated than young ladies in general that she was able to express
herself intelligibly in her own language. She had been well educated,
and would, no doubt, have done the _Times_ credit had the _Times_
chosen to employ her.

She was the youngest daughter of the youngest brother of the existing
Duke of Omnium, and the first cousin, therefore, of Mr. Plantagenet
Palliser, who was the eldest son of the second brother. And as her
mother had been a Bavilard there could be no better blood. But
Adelaide had be