attitude is self-depreciation, and who poses herself
as a mere nobody when the world is ringing with her praises. "Is it
possible that your Grace has ever heard of _me_?" said one of this class
with prettily affected _naivete_ at a time when all England was astir
about her, and when colors and fashions went by her name to make them
take with the public at large. No one knew better than the fair
_ingenue_ in question how far and wide her fame had spread, but she
thought it looked modest and simple to assume ignorance of her own
value, and to declare that she was but a creeping worm when all the
world knew that she was a soaring butterfly.

There is a certain little kind of affectation very common among pretty
women; and this is the affectation of not knowing that they are pretty,
and not recognising the effect of their beauty on men. Take a woman with
bewildering eyes, say, of a maddening size and shape, and fringed with
long lashes that distract you to look at; the creature knows that her
eyes are bewildering, as well as she knows that fire burns and that ice
melts; she knows the effect of that trick she has with them--the sudden
uplifting of the heavy lid, and the swift, full gaze that she gives
right into a man's eyes. She has practiced it often in the glass, and
knows to a mathematical nicety the exact height to which the lid must be
raised, and the exact fixity of the gaze. She knows the whole meaning of
the look, and the stirring of men's blood that it creates; but if you
speak to her of the effect of her trick, she puts on an air of extremest
innocence, and protests her entire ignorance as to anything her eyes may
say or mean: and if you press her hard she will look at you in the same
way for your own benefit, and deny at the very moment of offence.

Various other tricks has she with those bewildering eyes of hers--each
more perilous than the other to men's peace; and all unsparingly
employed, no matter what the result. For this is the woman who flirts to
the extreme limits, then suddenly draws up and says she meant nothing.
Step by step she has led you on, with looks and smiles, and pretty
doubtful phrases always susceptible of two meanings, the one for the ear
by mere word, the other for the heart by the accompaniments of look and
manner, which are intangible; step by step she has drawn you deeper and
deeper into the maze where she has gone before as your decoy; then, when
she has you safe, she raises her eyes f