As, saying these words, Tina pauses for a moment, with the novels and hair-pins in disorder at her feet, with her pretty hands twisted behind her back, her face uplifted, and her dark eyes bright with thoughts--in that instant’s repose let us seize the opportunity to claim for our own the picture that she makes. A dainty creature! small, slim, lithe, and dark, with a foreign grace, and a southern colouring, with full lips, whose redness relieves the darkness of her face, and with glowing eyes that have sparks and glints of light! Seeing her in this moment one might fancy her to be some wild-spirited, capricious, playful child, full of possible passion, and love of reckless daring, not easily guided, and still less easily restrained. But Tina had other moods--alas! poor girl--which could also find their expression in her face, a weary bitterness that could make her lips cold and hard, could rob her cheek of its freshness and her features of their youth. And then, besides, if she ever found herself alone with any member of the sex that was not her own, there was yet another expression to be observed in her eyes, which could impart to them the most attractive charm--a look of the softest, tenderest sympathy, which held as by magic the male glance bent on hers. If you, being a woman, not a man to be fascinated, could have seen those soft eyes and those sympathising lips, something like a doubt must have risen in your mind as to what the meaning of that tender glance could be. It meant mischief. Reckless, capricious, improvident, with no education in the laws of right and wrong, with a love of amusement which had never been restrained by any fear for another besides herself--Tina might have been held, in spite of comparative youth and innocence, to represent one part of the darker side of life, the type of woman who through all succeeding ages has been able to be the danger, if not the ruin, of man. For though such a character presents an open snare, it is yet a snare into which feet fall easily.