It would have been difficult to guess her exact age.

She owned to thirty-four, and a decade ago, when she had first joined her father in India, she must have possessed a certain elfish prettiness of her own.

Now, thanks to those years spent under a tropical sun, she was a trifle faded and passee-looking.
Following upon the advent of Roger and his cousin the conversation became general for a few minutes, then Lady Gertrude drew her son towards a French window opening on to the garden--a garden immaculately laid out, with flower-beds breaking the expanse of lawn at just the correct intervals--and eventually she and Roger passed out of the room to discuss with immense seriousness the shortcomings of the gardener as exemplified in the shape of one of the geranium beds.
"_You_ won't like it here!" observed Isobel Carson rather bluntly, when the two girls were left alone.
"Why shouldn't I ?" Nan smiled.
"Because you won't fit in at all.

You'll be like a rocket battering about in the middle of a set piece." Isobel lacked neither brains nor observation, though she had been wise enough to conceal both these facts from Lady Gertrude.
"Don't you like it here, then ?" Isobel regarded her thoughtfully, as though speculating how far she dared be frank.
"Of course I like it.

But it's Hobson's choice with me," she replied rather grimly.