a moment,—­but which yet, in that half moment, nearly killed you by the power of their sweetness.  Her cheek was the softest thing in nature, and the colour of it, when its colour was fixed enough to be told, was a shade of pink so faint and creamy that you would hardly dare to call it by its name.  Her mouth was perfect, not small enough to give that expression of silliness which is so common, but almost divine, with the temptation of its full, rich, ruby lips.  Her teeth, which she but seldom showed, were very even and very white, and there rested on her chin the dearest dimple that ever acted as a loadstar to mens’s eyes.  The fault of her face, if it had a fault, was in her nose,—­which was a little too sharp, and perhaps too small.  A woman who wanted to depreciate Violet Effingham had once called her a pug-nosed puppet; but I, as her chronicler, deny that she was pug-nosed,—­and all the world who knew her soon came to understand that she was no puppet.  In figure she was small, but not so small as she looked to be.  Her feet and hands were delicately fine, and there was a softness about her whole person, an apparent compressibility, which seemed to indicate that she might go into very small compass.  Into what compass and how compressed, there were very many men who held very different opinions.  Violet Effingham was certainly no puppet.  She was great at dancing,—­as perhaps might be a puppet,—­but she was great also at archery, great at skating,—­and great, too, at hunting.  With reference to that last accomplishment, she and Lady Baldock had had more than one terrible tussle, not always with advantage to the dragon.  “My dear aunt,” she had said once during the last winter, “I am going to the meet with George,”—­George was her cousin, Lord Baldock, and was the dragon’s son,—­“and there, let there be an end of it.”  “And you will promise me that you will not go further,” said the dragon.  “I will promise nothing to-day to any man or to any woman,” said Violet.  What was to be said to a young lady who spoke in this way, and who had become of age only a fortnight since?  She rode that day the famous run from Bagnall’s Gorse to Foulsham Common, and was in at the death.

Violet Effingham was now sitting in conference with her friend Lady Laura, and they were discussing matters of high import,—­of very high import, indeed,—­to the interests of both of them.  “I do not ask you to accept him,” said Lady Laura.

“That is lucky,” said the other, “as he has never asked me.”

“He has done much the same.  You know that he loves you.”

“I know,—­or fancy that I know,—­that so many men love me!  But, after all, what sort of love is it?  It is just as when you and I, when we see something nice in a shop, call it a dear duck of a thing, and tell somebody to go and buy it, let the price be ever so extravagant.  I know my own position, Laura.  I’m a dear duck of a thing.”

“You are a very dear thing to Oswald.”