CONFIDENCE
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 favourite colour, but I prefer it in 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 reflexions. He said to himself that there were two kinds of pretty girls—the acutely conscious and the finely unconscious. Mrs. Vivian's protégée 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 afterwards to say to
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