She was seven-and-twenty, and appeared many years younger until she looked at you.
Mrs.Gresley looked with veiled irritation at her sister-in-law in her clean holland gown, held in at the waist with a broad lilac ribbon, adroitly drawn in picturesque folds through a little silver buckle.
Mrs.Gresley, who had a waist which the Southminster dress-maker informed her had "to be kept down," made a mental note for the hundredth time that Hester "laced in." Hester gave that impression of "finish" and sharpness of edge so rarely found among the blurred, vague outlines of English women.

There was nothing vague about her.

Lord Newhaven said she had been cut out body and mind with a sharp pair of scissors.

Her irregular profile, her delicate, pointed speech and fingers, her manner of picking up her slender feet as she walked, her quick, alert movements--everything about her was neat, adjusted, perfect in its way, yet without more apparent effort than the _succes fou_ in black and white of the water wagtail, which she so closely resembled.
"Good-morning," she said, turning back with them to the house.

"Abel says it is going to be the hottest day we have had yet.