A coquette is a being who wishes to please. Amiable being! If you do not like her, you will have no difficulty in finding a female companion of a different mood. Alas! coquettes are but too rare. ‘Tis a career that requires great abilities, infinite pains, a gay and airy spirit. ‘Tis the coquette that provides all amusement; suggests the riding party, plans the picnic, gives and guesses charades, acts them. She is the stirring element amid the heavy congeries of social atoms; the soul of the house, the salt of the banquet. Let any one pass a very agreeable week, or it may be ten days, under any roof, and analyse the cause of his satisfaction, and one might safely make a gentle wager that his solution would present him with the frolic phantom of a coquette.
‘It is impossible that Mr. Coningsby can remember me!’ said a clear voice; and he looked round, and was greeted by a pair of sparkling eyes and the gayest smile in the world.
It was Lady Everingham, the Duke’s married daughter.
CHAPTER III.
‘And you walked here!’ said Lady Everingham to Coningsby, when the stir of arranging themselves at dinner had subsided. ‘Only think, papa, Mr. Coningsby walked here! I also am a great walker.’
‘I had heard much of the forest,’ said Coningsby.
‘Which I am sure did not disappoint you,’ said the Duke.
‘But forests without adventures!’ said Lady Everingham, a little shrugging her pretty shoulders.