A note at length interrupted the prolonged silence. It was from Aurora the Beauty, whose Father possessed a large estate in the neighbourhood, and who had just then come into the country for a few weeks. Aurora earnestly requested Hermione and her Mother to visit her.
"I will do as you wish," said Hermione, looking rather grave; "but really a visit to Aurora is a sort of small misfortune."
"I hope you are not envious of her beauty, Hermione? Take care."
"Nay, you are cruel, Mamma, now. I should like to be handsome, but not at the expense of being so very dull in spirits as poor Aurora often is. But really, unless you have ever spent an hour alone with her, you can form no idea of how tired one gets."
"What of, Hermione? of her face?"
"Oh no, not of her face; it is charming, and by the way you have just put into my head how I may escape from being tired, even if I am left alone with her for hours!"
"Nay, now you really puzzle me, my dear; I suggested nothing but looking at her face."
"Ah, but as she is really and truly such a model of beauty, what do you think of offering to make a likeness of her, Mamma? It will delight her to sit and be looked at, even by me, in the country, and I shall be so much pleased to have such a pleasant occupation. I am quite reconciled to the idea of going."
And a note was written, and despatched accordingly.
"But," persisted Hermione, rising to sit near her Mother, "you do not above half know Aurora. One would think she had been born in what is called a 'four warnt way,' with nothing but cross roads about her. Nothing is ever right. She is always either exhausted with the heat of the sun, or frozen with cold, or the evening is so tedious, she wants it to be bedtime, or if there is any unusual gaiety going on, she quarrels with the same length of evening, because it is so intolerably short; and, in short, she is never truly happy but when she is surrounded by admirers, whether men or women. And this seems to me to be a sad way of 'getting her time over,' as the poor women say of life. Ah, Mamma, it goes but too quickly."