The Crowned Skull by Fergus Hume — Read

Miss Lavinia Quinton was the sister of Dericka's mother, a wealthy spinster, who disliked Sir Hannibal as much as she loved his daughter. She also liked Oswald Forde, and was disposed to forward his suit, both on account of his good looks and because the baronet did not approve of him as Dericka's suitor. There must have been some Irish blood in Miss Lavinia, for she was always in the opposition, and would never cease to argue while she had breath left in her spare body. Dericka was very fond of her, and Aunt Lavinia approved of Dericka, saying that all the sense in the girl came from her mother, which remark was a side slap at Sir Hannibal.

The house of this odd personage was in a quiet Kensington square, where the rents were high and the dwellers in the various mansions well-to-do. Everything in that square went by clockwork, and the Judgment Day would have found the inhabitants dressed in their best bibs and tuckers ready to listen to the last trump. Miss Quinton herself was one of the precise old ladies in the place--tall, slender and aristocratic-looking. Her silvery hair was worn in the fashion of Marie Antoinette, and suited her wrinkled, oval face with its arched nose and thin lips. She always dressed in grey, like a demure nun, and like a nun she was given to religious works, mostly concerned with an extremely high church round the corner. Walking very erect, with her nose held aloft as though disdaining meaner clay, Miss Lavinia passed for being proud and cold. Proud she certainly was, but not cold, as many a poor person knew how warm hearted she could be when there was charitable work to be done. But she assuredly possessed sharp eyes and a sharp tongue, and could make herself eminently disagreeable on occasions. She chose to do so when Sir Hannibal and Dericka arrived from Cornwall.