ngland, he means half-past
seven, and sometimes a quarter to eight. At seven o'clock I was the only
person in Mr. Farnaby's drawing-room. At ten minutes past seven, Mr.
Farnaby made his appearance. I had a good mind to take his place in the
middle of the hearth-rug, and say, "Farnaby, I am glad to see you." But
I looked at his whiskers; and _they_ said to me, as plainly as words
could speak, "Better not!"

In five minutes more, Mrs. Farnaby joined us.

I wish I was a practised author--or, no, I would rather, for the moment,
be a competent portrait-painter, and send you Mrs. Farnaby's likeness
enclosed. How I am to describe her in words, I really don't know. My
dear fellow, she almost frightened me. I never before saw such a woman;
I never expect to see such a woman again. There was nothing in her
figure, or in her way of moving, that produced this impression on
me--she is little and fat, and walks with a firm, heavy step, like the
step of a man. Her face is what I want to make you see as plainly as I
saw it myself: it was her face that startled me.

So far as I can pretend to judge, she must have been pretty, in a
healthy way, when she was young. I declare I hardly know whether she is
not pretty now. She certainly has no marks or wrinkles; her hair either
has no gray in it, or is too light to show the gray. She has preserved
her fair complexion; perhaps with art to assist it--I can't say. As for
her lips--I am not speaking disrespectfully, I am only describing them
truly, when I say that they invite kisses in spite of her. In two words,
though she has been married (as I know from what one of the guests told
me after dinner) for sixteen years, she would be still an irresistible
little woman, but for the one startling drawback of her eyes. Don't
mistake me. In themselves, they are large, well-opened blue eyes, and
may at one time have been the chief attraction in her face. But now
there is an expression of suffering in them--long, unsolaced suffering,
as I believe--so despairing and so dreadful, that she really made my
heart ache when I looked at her. I will swear to it, that woman lives in
some secret hell of her own making, and longs for the release of death;
and is so inveterately full of bodily life and strength, that she may
carry her burden with her to the utmost verge of life. I am digging
the pen into the paper, I feel this so strongly, and I am so wretchedly
incompetent to express my feeling. Can you imagine a