To her spectator she addressed, for the moment, the whole volume of her being--addressed it in her glances, her attitudes, her exclamations, in a hundred little experiments of tone and gesture and position.

And these rustling artifices were so innocent and obvious that the directness of her desire to be well with her observer became in itself a grace; it led Bernard afterward to say to himself that the natural vocation and metier of little girls for whom existence was but a shimmering surface, was to prattle and ruffle their plumage; their view of life and its duties was as simple and superficial as that of an Oriental bayadere.

It surely could not be with regard to this transparent little flirt that Gordon Wright desired advice; you could literally see the daylight--or rather the Baden gaslight--on the other side of her.

She sat there for a minute, turning her little empty head to and fro, and catching Bernard's eye every time she moved; she had for the instant the air of having exhausted all topics.

Just then a young lady, with a gentleman at her side, drew near to the little group, and Longueville, perceiving her, instantly got up from his chair.
"There 's a beauty of the unconscious class!" he said to himself.