One bedroom, and that the biggest, was appropriated to the Earl of
Linlithgow, the son of the countess, a young man who passed perhaps five
nights in town during the year. Other inmate there was none besides the
aunt and the niece and the four servants, of whom one was Lizzie's own
maid. Why should such a countess have troubled herself with the custody of
such a niece? Simply because the countess regarded it as a duty. Lady
Linlithgow was worldly, stingy, ill-tempered, selfish, and mean. Lady
Linlithgow would cheat a butcher out of a mutton chop, or a cook out of a
month's wages, if she could do so with some slant of legal wind in her
favour. She would tell any number of lies to carry a point in what she
believed to be social success. It was said of her that she cheated at
cards. In back-biting, no venomous old woman between Bond Street and Park
Lane could beat her--or, more wonderful still, no venomous old man at the
clubs. But nevertheless she recognised certain duties, and performed them,
though she hated them. She went to church, not merely that people might
see her there--as to which in truth she cared nothing--but because she
thought it was right. And she took in Lizzie Greystock, whom she hated
almost as much as she did sermons, because the admiral's wife had been her
sister, and she recognised a duty. But, having thus bound herself to
Lizzie--who was a beauty--of course it became the first object of her life
to get rid of Lizzie by a marriage. And though she would have liked to
think that Lizzie would be tormented all her days, though she thoroughly
believed that Lizzie deserved to be tormented, she set her heart upon a
splendid match. She would at any rate be able to throw it daily in her
niece's teeth that the splendour was of her doing. Now a marriage with Sir
Florian Eustace would be very splendid, and therefore she was unable to go
into the matter of the jewels with that rigour which in other
circumstances she would certainly have displayed.

The match with Sir Florian Eustace--for a match it came to be--was