prefer him above the others; she would attach him to herself,
display all her powers of coquetry for him. It was a fancy, such
a merest Duchess's whim as furnished a Lope or a Calderon with
the plot of the _Dog in the Manger_. She would not suffer another
woman to engross him; but she had not the remotest intention of
being his.

Nature had given the Duchess every qualification for the part of
coquette, and education had perfected her. Women envied her, and
men fell in love with her, not without reason. Nothing that can
inspire love, justify it, and give it lasting empire was wanting
in her. Her style of beauty, her manner, her voice, her bearing,
all combined to give her that instinctive coquetry which seems to
be the consciousness of power. Her shape was graceful; perhaps
there was a trace of self-consciousness in her changes of
movement, the one affectation that could be laid to her charge;
but everything about her was a part of her personality, from her
least little gesture to the peculiar turn of her phrases, the
demure glance of her eyes. Her great lady's grace, her most
striking characteristic, had not destroyed the very French quick
mobility of her person. There was an extraordinary fascination
in her swift, incessant changes of attitude. She seemed as if
she surely would be a most delicious mistress when her corset and
the encumbering costume of her part were laid aside. All the
rapture of love surely was latent in the freedom of her
expressive glances, in her caressing tones, in the charm of her
words. She gave glimpses of the high-born courtesan within her,
vainly protesting against the creeds of the duchess.

You might sit near her through an evening, she would be gay and