At the age when we are all of us most apt to take our colouring, in the form of a reflection from the colouring of other people, she had been sent to other locations, and had passed on from one place to another, before there was time for any one colouring more than another to settle itself on her firmly. As a consequence of this, she had come back with so many different sides to her character, all more or less jarring with each other, that she seemed to pass her life in a state of perpetual contradiction
with herself. She could be a busy woman, and a lazy woman; cloudy in the head, and clear in the head; a model of determination, and a spectacle of helplessness, all together.
(adapted from: The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins, p.50)