rly demoiselle was a thin, dried-up old maid, yellow as the
parchment of a Parliament record, wrinkled as a lake ruffled by the
wind, with gray eyes, large prominent teeth, and the hands of a man. She
was rather short, a little crooked, possibly hump-backed; but no one had
ever been inquisitive enough to ascertain the nature of her perfections
or her imperfections. Dressed in the same style as Mademoiselle du
Guenic, she stirred an enormous quantity of petticoats and linen
whenever she wanted to find one or other of the two apertures of her
gown through which she reached her pockets. The strangest jingling of
keys and money then echoed among her garments. She always wore, dangling
from one side, the bunch of keys of a good housekeeper, and from
the other her silver snuff-box, thimble, knitting-needles, and other
implements that were also resonant. Instead of Mademoiselle Zephirine's
wadded hood, she wore a green bonnet, in which she may have visited her
melons, for it had passed, like them, from green to yellowish; as for
its shape, our present fashions are just now bringing it back to Paris,
after twenty years absence, under the name of Bibi. This bonnet was
constructed under her own eye and by the hands of her nieces, out of
green Florence silk bought at Guerande, and an old bonnet-shape, renewed
every five years at Nantes,--for Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel allowed her
bonnets the longevity of a legislature. Her nieces also made her gowns,
cut by an immutable pattern. The old lady still used the cane with the
short hook that all women carried in the early days of Marie-Antoinette.
She belonged to the very highest nobility of Brittany. Her arms bore the
ermine of its ancient dukes. In her and in her sister the illustrious
Breton house of the Pen-Hoels ended. Her younger sister had married a
Kergarouet, who, in spite of the deep disapproval of the whole region,
added the name of Pen-Hoel to his own and called himself the Vicomte de
Kergarouet-Pen-Hoel.

"Heaven has punished him," said the old lady; "he has nothing but
daughters, and the Kergarouet-Pen-Hoel name will be wiped out."

Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel possessed about seven thousand francs a year
from the rental of lands. She had come into her property at thirty-six
years of age, and managed it herself, inspecting it on horseback, and
displaying on all points the firmness of character which is noticeable
in most deformed persons. Her avarice was admired by the whole cou