Sublime

a dowdy dull girl, with one of those characteristic British faces that, once seen, are never remembered;

Rembrandt would have painted her with pleasure, and would have made her broad features look out of the canvas with intelligent honesty. For honesty, truth-telling fairness, was Mary’s reigning virtue: she neither tried to create illusions, nor indulged in them for her own behoof, and when she was in a good mood she had humour enough in her to laugh

the Marquis de Sade, alongside Clarice Lispector’s The Passion According to G.H.—

vagaries

she was seeking confidence and stability in her own sense of taste.