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. Just then a young