"I know she is peculiar and outspoken, but at heart she is true as
steel, and I thought she would be very lonely taking her Thanksgiving
dinner alone. And then she will be glad to see you and inquire after her
brother's family, whom she knows you met abroad."

"Yes, we spent a week with her brother, the Hon. John McPherson, and his
wife Lady Jane, at the house of Captain Smithers in Middlesex. Miss
McPherson is, at least, well connected," Geraldine said, mollified at
once as she recalled her intimacy with Lady Jane McPherson.

To be acquainted with a titled lady was, in her opinion, something to be
proud of, and since her return from Europe she had wearied and disgusted
her friends with her frequent allusions to Lady Jane and her visit to
Penrhyn Park where she had met her. And Miss McPherson was her
sister-in-law, and on that account she must be tolerated and treated, at
least, with a show of friendship. So when she heard that she had arrived
she went to meet her with a good deal of gush and demonstration, which,
however, did not in the least mislead the lady with regard to her real
sentiments, for she and Geraldine had always been at odds, and from the
very nature of things there could be no real sympathy between the
fashionable lady of society, whose life was all a deception, and the
blunt, outspoken woman, who called a spade a spade, and whose rule of
action was, as she expressed it, the naked truth and nothing but the
naked truth. Had she worn false teeth and supposed any one thought them
natural, she would at once have taken them out to show that they were
not; and as to false hair, and frizzes, and powder, and all the many
devices used, as she said, "to build a woman," she abominated them, and
preferred to be just what the Lord had made her, without any attempt to
improve upon his work. Once Lucy Grey had asked her why she did not call
herself Elizabeth, or Lizzie, instead of Betsey, which was so
old-fashioned, and she had retorted, sharply, that though of all names
upon earth she thought Betsey the worst, it was given to her by her
sponsors in baptism, and Betsey she would remain to the day of her
death.

She was tall and angular, with large features, sharp nose, and little
bright, black, bead-like eyes, which seemed to look you through, and
read your most secret thoughts. As her name indicated, she was of Scotch
descent; indeed, her grandfather was Scotch by birth, but he had moved
into England, where her fat