Never was metamorphosis more complete. Beautiful as her features were, the lovely picture which Fanny's face used to present to the eye required her bright waving locks to complete its charm; and without them she looked more like a Chinese beauty on a japan skreen, than like herself. Something approaching to a smile passed over Rosalind's features, which the more readily found place there, perhaps, from the belief that Charles's arrival would soon set her ringlets curling again. "Fanny, your brother is come," said she, "and he is waiting for you in the drawing-room." "Charles?" cried Fanny, forgetting for a moment her new character; and hastily rising she had almost quitted the room, when she recollected herself, and turning back, said, "You will come too, to see Charles, Mr. Cartwright?" "I will come, as usual, this evening, my dear child," said he, with the appearance of great composure; "but I will not break in upon him now. Was his return expected?" he added carelessly, as he took up his hat; and as he spoke Rosalind thought that his eye glanced towards her. "No indeed!" replied Fanny: "I never was more surprised. Did he say, Rosalind, what it was brought him home?" "I asked him to state his reason for it," replied Miss Torrington, "and he told me he could assign nothing but whim." Rosalind looked in the face of the vicar as she said this, and she perceived a slight, but to her perfectly perceptible, change in its expression. He was evidently relieved from some uneasy feeling or suspicion by what she had said. "Go to your brother, my dear child; let me not detain you from so happy a meeting for a moment." Fanny again prepared to leave the room; but as she did so, her eye chanced to rest upon her own figure reflected from a mirror above the chimney-piece. She raised her hand almost involuntarily to her hair. "Will not Charles think me looking very strangely?" said she, turning towards Mr. Cartwright with a blushing cheek and very bashful eye. He whispered something in her ear in reply, which heightened her blush, and induced her to answer with great earnestness, "Oh no!" and, without farther doubt or delay, she ran down stairs. Miss Torrington followed her, not thinking it necessary to take any leave of the vicar, who gently found his way down stairs, and out of the house, as he had found his way into it, without troubling any servant whatever. CHAPTER II. CHARLES'S AMUSEMENT AT HIS SISTER'S APPEARANCE.--HE DISCUSSES HER CASE WITH ROSALIND. Rosalind and Fanny entered the drawing-room together; and young Mowbray, at the sound of their approach, sprang forward to meet them; but the moment he threw his eyes on his sister he burst forth into a fit of uncontrollable laughter; and though he kissed her again and again, still, between every embrace, he broke out anew, with every demonstration of vehement mirth.