As we before observed, she was the fortunate sole heiress to her father's accumulation, which might amount to nearly thirty thousand pounds; but had been little gifted by nature.

In fact, she was what you may style most preposterously ugly; her figure was large and masculine; her hair red; and her face very deeply indented with the small-pox.

As a man, she would have been considered the essence of vulgarity; as a woman, she was the quintessence: so much so, that she had arrived at the age of thirty-six without having, notwithstanding her property, received any attentions which could be construed into an offer.
As we always seek most eagerly that which we find most difficult to obtain, she was possessed with _une fureur de se marier_; and, as a last resource, had resolved to go out to India, where she had been informed that "anything white" was acceptable.

This _passion_ for matrimony (for with her it had so become, if not a disease) occupied her whole thoughts; but she attempted to veil them by always pretending to be extremely sensitive and refined; to be shocked at anything which had the slightest allusion to the "increase and multiply;" and constantly lamented the extreme fragility of her constitution; to which her athletic bony frame gave so determined a lie, that her hearers were struck dumb with the barefaced assertion.

Miss Tavistock had kept up a correspondence with an old schoolmate, who had been taken away early to join her friends in India, and had there married.