Becky of Becky's Bookshelves

“For all Miss Corvus's progressive views, for all her insistence on looking to the future, this was a chamber firmly enshrouded in the past. A veiled room, all stale darkness and decay.
Miss Corvus had been similarly veiled the first time Effie had seen her that fateful day eighteen years ago in the London slum of St. Giles.
But Miss Corvus wasn't veiled now.
She sat in a green damask-upholstered armchair by the window, her uncovered face as white as wax. She was clad in stark black, just as Effie was-a plain, but impeccably tailored, silk dress worn over an abundance of petticoats and a formidable wire crinoline. A jet brooch gleamed at her throat, and an embroidered lace handkerchief was clutched in her pale hand.”
― Mimi Matthews, Rules for Ruin