No doubt she wore a chignon; but if so she wore it with the special view of being in no degree remarkable in reference to her head-dress.

Such as she was,--beauty or no beauty--her own mind on the subject was made up, and she had resolved long since that the gift of personal loveliness had not been bestowed upon her.

And yet after a fashion she was proud of her own appearance.

She knew that she looked like a lady, and she knew also that she had all that command of herself which health and strength can give to a woman when she is without feminine affectation.
Lady Chiltern, in describing her to Phineas Finn, had said that she talked Italian, and wrote for the _Times_.

The former assertion was, no doubt, true, as Miss Palliser had passed some years of her childhood in Florence; but the latter statement was made probably with reference to her capability rather than her performance.