an hour, she
reappeared, with broad straw-hat, and gown tucked up _a la bergere_
over the striped Welsh petticoat, perhaps to show off the ankles,
which only looked the finer for a pair of heavy laced boots, Elsley
honestly felt it a pleasure to look at her, and a still greater
pleasure to talk to her, and to be talked to by her; while she, bent
on making herself agreeable, partly from real good taste, partly from
natural good-nature, and partly, too, because she saw in his eyes that
he admired her, chatted sentiment about all heaven and earth.

For to Miss Valencia--it is sad to have to say it--admiration had been
now, for three years, her daily bread. She had lived in the thickest
whirl of the world, and, as most do for a while, found it a very
pleasant place.

She had flirted--with how many must not be told; and perhaps with more
than one with whom she had no business to flirt. Little Scoutbush had
remonstrated with her on some such affair, but she had silenced him
with an Irish jest,--"You're a fisherman, Freddy; and when you can't
catch salmon, you catch trout; and when you can't catch trout, you'll
whip on the shallow for poor little gubbahawns, and say that it is all
to keep your hand in--and so do I."

The old ladies said that this was the reason why she had not married;
the men, however, asserted that no one dare marry her; and one
club-oracle had given it as his opinion that no man in his rational
senses was to be allowed to have anything to do with her, till she had
been well jilted two or three times, to take the spirit out of her:
but that catastrophe had not yet occurred, and Miss Valencia still
reigned "triumphant and alone," though her aunt, old Lady Knockdown,
moved all the earth, and some dirty places, too, below the earth, to
get the wild Irish girl off her hands; "for," quoth she, "I feel with
Valencia, indeed, just like one of those men who carry about little
dogs in the Quadrant. I always pity the poor men so, and think how
happy they must be when they have sold one. It is one chance less, you
know, of having it bite them horribly, and then run away after all."

There was, however, no more real harm in Valencia, than there is in
every child of Adam. Town frivolity had not corrupted her. She was
giddy, given up to enjoyment of the present: but there was not a
touch, of meanness about her: and if she was selfish, as every one
must needs be whose thoughts are of pleasure, admiration, and success,