before long I noticed a lady who evidently
had an eye for her neighbours as well as for the table. She was seated
about half-way between my friend and me, and I presently observed that
she was trying to catch his eye. Though at Homburg, as people said, "one
could never be sure," I yet doubted whether this lady were one of those
whose especial vocation it was to catch a gentleman's eye. She was
youthful rather than elderly, and pretty rather than plain; indeed, a few
minutes later, when I saw her smile, I thought her wonderfully pretty.
She had a charming gray eye and a good deal of yellow hair disposed in
picturesque disorder; and though her features were meagre and her
complexion faded, she gave one a sense of sentimental, artificial
gracefulness. She was dressed in white muslin very much puffed and
filled, but a trifle the worse for wear, relieved here and there by a
pale blue ribbon. I used to flatter myself on guessing at people's
nationality by their faces, and, as a rule, I guessed aright. This
faded, crumpled, vaporous beauty, I conceived, was a German--such a
German, somehow, as I had seen imagined in literature. Was she not a
friend of poets, a correspondent of philosophers, a muse, a priestess of
aesthetics--something in the way of a Bettina, a Rahel? My conjectures,
however, were speedily merged in wonderment as to what my diffident
friend was making of her. She caught his eye at last, and raising an
ungloved hand, covered altogether with blue-gemmed rings--turquoises,
sapphires, and lapis--she beckoned him to come to her. The gesture was
executed with a sort of practised coolness, and accompanied with an
appealing smile. He stared a moment, rather blankly, unable to suppose
that the invitation was addressed to him; then, as it was immediately
repeated with a good deal of intensity, he blushed to the roots of his
hair, wavered awkwardly, and at last made his way to the lady's chair. By
the time he reached it he was crimson, and wiping his forehead with his
pocket-handkerchief. She tilted back, looked up at him with the same
smile, laid two fingers on his sleeve, and said something,
interrogatively, to which he replied by a shake of the head. She was
asking him, evidently, if he had ever played, and he was saying no. Old
players have a fancy that when luck has turned her back on them they can
put her into good-humour again by having their stakes placed by a novice.
Our young man's physiognomy had