Lady Monk was a woman now about fifty years of age, who had been a great beauty, and who was still handsome in her advanced age. Her figure was very good. She was tall and of fine proportion, though by no means verging to that state of body which our excellent American friend and critic Mr. Hawthorne has described as beefy and has declared to be the general condition of English ladies of Lady Monk's age. Lady Monk was not beefy. She was a comely, handsome, upright, dame,--one of whom, as regards her outward appearance, England might be proud,--and of whom Sir Cosmo Monk was very proud. She had come of the family of the Worcestershire Fitzgeralds, of whom it used to be said that there never was one who was not beautiful and worthless. Looking at Lady Monk you would hardly think that she could be a worthless woman; but there were one or two who professed to know her, and who declared that she was a true scion of the family to which she belonged;--that even her husband's ample fortune had suffered from her extravagance, that she had quarrelled with her only son, and had succeeded in marrying her daughter to the greatest fool in the peerage. She had striven very hard to bring about a marriage between her nephew and the great heiress, and was a woman not likely to pardon those who had foiled her.

Lady Monk was about fifty years of age, had been a great beauty, and was still good-looking, with a fine, tall figure. She was outwardly a handsome, upright, dame, of whom England might be proud - and of whom Sir Cosmo Monk was very proud.
She had come of the family of the Worcestershire Fitzgeralds, of whom it was said that there never was one who was not beautiful and worthless. Looking at Lady Monk you would hardly think that she could be a worthless woman; but her husband's fortune had suffered from her extravagance, she had quarrelled with her only son, and had married her daughter to the greatest fool in the peerage. She had striven very hard to bring about a marriage between her nephew Burgo and the great heiress Lady Glencora, and she was not a woman to pardon those who had foiled her.
