第9章

I have been so peaceful, I have just sat here this way.

Do you call this immoral? You 're not obliged to gamble if you don't want to. Ella Maclane's father seems to think you get drawn in. I 'm sure I have n't been drawn in.

I know what you 're going to say--you 're going to say I have been drawn out. Well, I have, to-night. We just sit here so quietly--there 's nothing to do but to talk. We make a little party by ourselves--are you going to belong to our party?

Two of us are missing--Miss Vivian and Captain Lovelock.

Captain Lovelock has gone with her into the rooms to explain the gambling--Miss Vivian always wants everything explained.

I am sure I understood it the first time I looked at the tables.

Have you ever seen Miss Vivian? She 's very much admired, she 's so very unusual. Black hair 's so uncommon--I see you have got it too--but I mean for young ladies. I am sure one sees everything here.

There 's a woman that comes to the tables--a Portuguese countess--who has hair that is positively blue. I can't say I admire it when it comes to that shade. Blue 's my favorite color, but I prefer it in the eyes," continued Longueville's companion, resting upon him her own two brilliant little specimens of the tint.

He listened with that expression of clear amusement which is not always an indication of high esteem, but which even pretty chatterers, who are not the reverse of estimable, often prefer to masculine inattention; and while he listened Bernard, according to his wont, made his reflections.

He said to himself that there were two kinds of pretty girls--the acutely conscious and the finely unconscious. Mrs. Vivian's protege was a member of the former category; she belonged to the genus coquette.

We all have our conception of the indispensable, and the indispensable, to this young lady, was a spectator; almost any male biped would serve the purpose. 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.