In most branches of female erudition Miss Torrington was decidedly inferior to the Miss Mowbrays: but nature had given her a voice and a taste for music which led her to excel in it; and so much spirit and vivacity supplied on other points the want of regular study, that by the help of her very pretty person, her good birth, and her large fortune, nobody but Charles Mowbray ever discovered deficiency or inferiority of any kind in Rosalind Torrington: but he had declared vehemently, the moment she arrived, that she was not one quarter so pretty as his sister Fanny, nor one thousandth part so angelic in all ways as his sister Helen.
Such was the party who, all smiles and felicitations, first crowded clamorously round the hero of the fête which now occupied the thoughts of all, and then seated themselves at the breakfast-table, more intent upon talking of its coming glories than on doing justice to the good things before them.
"Oh, you lucky twenty-one!" exclaimed Miss Torrington, addressing young Mowbray. "Did any one ever see such sunshine!... And just think what it would have been if all the tents of the people had been drenched with rain! The inward groans for best bonnets would have checked the gratulations in their throats, and we should have had sighs perchance for cheers."
"I do not believe any single soul would have cared for rain, or thought for one moment of the weather, let it have been what it would, Rosalind," observed Helen. "Charles," she continued, "is so adored and doted upon by all the people round, both rich and poor, that I am persuaded, while they were drinking his health, there would not have been a thought bestowed on the weather."
"Oh!... To be sure, dear Helen.... I quite forgot that. Of course, a glance at the Mowbray would be worth all the Mackintosh cloaks in the world, for keeping a dry skin in a storm;--but then, you know, the hero himself might have caught cold when he went out to shine upon them--and the avoiding this is surely a blessing for which we all ought to be thankful: not but what I would have held an umbrella over him with the greatest pleasure, of course ... but, altogether, I think it is quite as well as it is."
"You won't quiz my Helen out of her love for me, Miss Rosalind Torrington," replied Charles, laughing; "so do not hope it."