By the above it will be manifest to the reader that the enunciator of these sentiments could be nothing less than an arrant flirt; as, indeed, was the case. Violet Avory was as proud of her conquests, and the multifold trophies of a substantial nature which accompanied them, as a Cheyenne war-chief of his scalps, and she looked upon them in the same light—legitimate tributes to her own prowess. She had begun to flirt when she was fourteen, and had carried it on, seriously and without a break, up to date, and she was now twenty-two. And Nature had endowed her with bountiful facilities in that line. Her face conformed to the strictest canons of beauty—oval, high-bred, with regular and delicate features, melting dark eyes, and a winsome little mouth with a smile ever hovering around its corners; and her quick, vivacious manner was forcibly if unconventionally defined by a large section of her admirers, especially the younger ones, as “awfully fetching.” She was a sort of distant connection of the Selwoods, whose acquaintance she had made during their last visit to England. They had been immensely taken with her, and now she was fulfilling a long-standing invitation to visit them in their South African home.
But with all her dazzling beauty and winning arts some men would not have looked twice at Violet Avory when Marian Selwood was by. The fair sweet face of the latter, with its large sleepy eyes, its red, smiling lips, parting from a row of white regular teeth, could grow very lovely; indeed, it was one of those faces which gain upon the observer with its owner’s further acquaintance. Nor was its normal gravity other than on the surface, for to cause the great blue eyes to sparkle with fun and mischief was no difficult matter. And Marian’s disposition was as sweet as her face, her mind that of a refined gentlewoman. She was born in the colony, and had lived the greater part of her life where we now see her, helping to keep house for her brother and his wife.
“Hot or cool, I vote we stroll somewhere,” cried Violet, starting up from her chair with a restlessness and energy she seldom displayed at that time of the day, when the sun made himself very definitely felt, even at that elevation.
“Very well,” acquiesced the other, gathering up her work. Then she added, with a smile, “You had better get a sunshade, Violet, or you’ll be taking back quite a stock of freckles. The now disconsolate ones will all cry off then.”
“Will they! But—are you not going to take one?”
“No. I’m about burnt enough already. Besides, there are no disconsolate ones in my case to doom to disillusion, so it doesn’t matter.”
“Oh yes! Very likely! I’m sure to believe that.”
“Go away, and get your hat on,” interrupted Marian.
“Come now, Marian,” said Violet, as the two girls wandered down the shady walk under the fruit-trees. “It’s all very well for you to affect the solemn, and all that kind of thing; but I don’t believe in it a bit, let me tell you. No—not one bit.”
“Oh, don’t you?”