"Why, you most ugly little beauty!" cried Charles, again giving way to merriment; "you don't mean to tell me that the _impayable_ absurdity of that poor little face is owing to any thing but your having just washed your hair?"
"It is owing to conviction, Charles," replied Fanny with great solemnity.
"Owing to conviction?--To conviction of what, my poor little girl?"
"To conviction that it is right, brother."
"Right, child, to make that object of yourself? What in the world can you mean, Fanny?"
"I mean, brother, that I have an inward conviction of the sin and folly of dressing our mortal clay to attract the eyes and the admiration of the worldly."
"By worldly, do you mean of all the world?" said Rosalind.
"No, Miss Torrington. By worldly, I mean those whose thoughts and wishes are fixed on the things of the earth."
"And it is the admiration of such only that you wish to avoid?" rejoined Rosalind.
"Certainly it is. Spiritual-minded persons see all things in the spirit--do all things in the spirit: of such there is nothing to fear."
Young Mowbray meanwhile stood looking at his sister, and listening to her words with the most earnest attention.
At length he said, more seriously than he had yet spoken, "To tell you the truth, little puritan, I do not like you at all in your new masquerading suit: though it must be confessed that you play your part well. I don't want to begin lecturing you, Fanny, the moment I come home; but I do hope you will soon get tired of this foolery, and let me see my poor father's daughter look and behave as a Christian young woman ought to do. Rosalind, will you take a walk with me? I want to have a look at my old pony."
Miss Torrington nodded her assent, and they both left the room together, leaving Fanny more triumphant than mortified.
"He said that my persecutions would begin as soon as my election was made sure! Oh! why is he not here to sustain and comfort me! But I will not fall away in the hour of trial!"
The poor girl turned her eyes from the window whence she saw her brother and Rosalind walking gaily and happily, as she thought, in search of the old pony, and hastened to take refuge in her dressing-room, now rendered almost sacred in her eyes by the pastoral visit she had that morning received there.