led there. Of her own
parentage no more was known. She had a small house in one of the very
small Mayfair streets, to which she was wont to invite her friends
for five o'clock tea. Other receptions she never attempted. During
the London seasons she always kept a carriage, and during the winters
she always had hunters. Who paid for them no one knew or cared. Her
dress was always perfect,--as far as fit and performance went. As
to approving Mrs. Carbuncle's manner of dress,--that was a question
of taste. Audacity may, perhaps, be said to have been the ruling
principle of her toilet;--not the audacity of indecency, which, let
the satirists say what they may, is not efficacious in England, but
audacity in colour, audacity in design, and audacity in construction.
She would ride in the park in a black and yellow habit, and appear at
the opera in white velvet without a speck of colour. Though certainly
turned thirty, and probably nearer to forty, she would wear her
jet-black hair streaming down her back, and when June came would
drive about London in a straw hat. But yet it was always admitted
that she was well dressed. And then would arise that question, who
paid the bills?

Mrs. Carbuncle was certainly a handsome woman. She was
full-faced,--with bold eyes, rather far apart, perfect black
eyebrows, a well-formed broad nose, thick lips, and regular teeth.
Her chin was round and short, with, perhaps, a little bearing towards
a double chin. But though her face was plump and round, there was
a power in it, and a look of command, of which it was, perhaps,
difficult to say in what features was the seat. But in truth the
mind will lend a tone to every feature, and it was the desire of Mrs.
Carbuncle's heart to command. But perhaps the wonder of her face was
its complexion. People said,--before they knew her, that, as a matter
of course, she had been made beautiful for ever. But, though that too
brilliant colour was almost always there, covering the cheeks but
never touching the forehead or the neck, it would at certain moments
shift, change, and even depart. When she was angry, it would vanish
for a moment and then return intensified. There was no chemistry on
Mrs. Carbuncle's cheek; and yet it was a tint so brilliant and so
little transparent, as almost to justify a conviction that it could
not be genuine. There were those who declared that nothing in the way
of complexion so beautiful as that of Mrs. Carbuncle's had been seen
on