"Miss Stiles," she said.

Miss Stiles, who came in, was not handsome. She was large and fat, with a
round red face like a sun, and she wore colours too bright for her size.
She had a slow soft voice like the melancholy moo of a cow. She was not a
bad woman, but, temperamentally, was made unhappy by the success or good
fortune of others. Were you in distress, she would love you, cherish you,
never abandon you. She would share her last penny with you, run to the end
of the world for you, defend you before the whole of humanity. Were you,
however, in robust health, she would hint to every one of a possible
cancer; were you popular, it would worry her terribly and she would
discover a thousand faults in your character; were you successful in your
work, she would pray for your approaching failure lest you should become
arrogant. She gossiped without cessation, and always, as it were, to
restore the proper balance of the world, to pull down the mighty from
their high places, to lift the humble only that they in their turn might
be pulled down. She played fluently and execrably on the piano. She spent
her day in running from house to house.

She had independent means, lived four months of the year in Polchester
(she had been born there and her family had been known there for many
generations before her), four months in London, and the rest of the year
abroad. She had met Alice Ronder in London and attached herself to her.
She liked the Ronders because they never boasted of their successes,
because Alice had a weak heart, because Ronder, who knew her character,
half-humorously deprecated his talents, which were, as he knew well
enough, no mean ones. She bored Alice Ronder, but Ronder found her useful.
She told him a great deal that he wanted to know, and although she was
never accurate in her information, he could separate the wheat from the
chaff. She was a walking mischief-maker, but meant no harm to a living