Her spirits were excited, and her language smelt of her origin, but
the superb fleshly beauty of the woman was aglow, and crying, 'I declare
I should burst in one of those boxes--just as if you'd stalled me!' she
fanned a wind on her face, and sumptuously spread her spherical skirts,
attended by the vanquished and captive Colonel Poltermore, a gentleman
manifestly bent on insinuating sly slips of speech to serve for here a
pinch of powder, there a match. 'Am I?' she was heard to say. She blew
prodigious deep-chested sighs of a coquette that has taken to roaring.
Presently her voice tossed out: 'As if I would!' These vivid
illuminations of the Colonel's proceedings were a pasture to the rearward
groups, composed of two very grand ladies, Caseldy, Mr. Beamish, a lord,
and Chloe.
'You man! Oh!' sprang from the duchess. 'What do I hear? I won't listen;
I can't, I mustn't, I oughtn't.'
So she said, but her head careened, she gave him her coy reluctant ear,
with total abandonment to the seductions of his whispers, and the lord
let fly a peal of laughter.
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