demands of Perivale. These demands had undoubtedly made her life
serious.

Life at Perivale was a very serious thing. As regards amusement,
ordinarily so called, the need of any such institution was not
acknowledged at Prospect House. Food, drink, and raiment were
acknowledged to be necessary to humanity, and, in accordance with the
rules of that house, they were supplied in plenty, and good of their
kind. Such ladies as Mrs Winterfield generally keep good tables,
thinking no doubt that the eatables should do honour to the grace that
is said for them. And Mrs Winterfield herself always wore a thick black
silk dress not rusty or dowdy with age but with some gloss of the silk
on it; giving away, with secret, underhand, undiscovered charity, her
old dresses to another lady of her own sort, on whom fortune had not
bestowed twelve hundred a year. And Mrs Winterfield kept a low,
four-wheeled, one-horsed phaeton, in which she made her pilgrimages
among the poor of Perivale, driven by the most solemn of stable-boys,
dressed up in a great white coat, the most priggish of hats, and white
cotton gloves. At the rate of five miles an hour was she driven about,
and this driving was to her the amusement of life. But such an
occupation to Clara Amedroz assisted to make life serious.

In person Mrs Winterfield was tall and thin, wearing on her brow thin
braids of false hair. She had suffered much from acute ill health, and
her jaws were sunken, and her eyes were hollow, and there was a look of
woe about her which seemed ever to be telling of her own sorrows in
this world and of the sorrows of others in the world to come.
Ill-nature was written on her face, but in this her face was a false
face. She had the manners of a cross, peevish woman; but her manners
also were false, and gave no proper idea of her character. But still,