Attractive, rather than handsome, was the epithet best suited to describe Adeline Mowbray. Her beauty was the beauty of expression of countenance, not regularity of feature, though the uncommon fairness and delicacy of her complexion, the lustre of her hazel eyes, her long dark eye-lashes, and the profusion of soft light hair which curled over the ever-mantling colour of her cheek, gave her some pretensions to what is denominated beauty. But her own sex declared she was plain--and perhaps they were right--though the other protested against the decision--and probably they were right also: but women criticize in detail, men admire in the aggregate. Women reason, and men feel, when passing judgment on female beauty: and when a woman declares another to be plain, the chances are that she is right in her opinion, as she cannot, from her being a woman, feel the charm of that power to please, that 'something than beauty dearer,' which often throws a veil over the irregularity of features and obtains, for even a plain woman, from men at least, the appellation of pretty. Whether Adeline's face were plain or not, her form could defy even the severity of female criticism. She was indeed tall, almost to a masculine degree; but such were the roundness and proportion of her limbs, such the symmetry of her whole person, such the lightness and gracefulness of her movements, and so truly feminine were her look and manner, that superior height was forgotten in the superior loveliness of her figure. It is not to be wondered at, then, that Miss Mowbray was an object of attention and admiration at Bath, as soon as she appeared, nor that her mother had her share of flattery and followers. Indeed, when it was known that Mrs Mowbray was a rich widow, and Adeline dependent upon her, the mother became, in the eyes of some people, much more attractive than her daughter. It was impossible, however, that, in such a place as Bath, Mrs Mowbray and Adeline could make, or rather retain, a general acquaintance. Their opinions on most subjects were so very different from those of the world, and they were so little conscious, from the retirement in which they lived, that this difference existed, or was likely to make them enemies, that not a day elapsed in which they did not shock the prejudices of some, and excite the contemptuous pity of others; and they soon saw their acquaintance coolly dropped by those who, as persons of family and fortune, had on their first arrival sought it with eagerness.