She looked one, in truth, whom few men could resist, bending to him out of her owls' nest, with the flash of the sun under the blue awning brightly catching the sunny brown of her soft cheek and the cherry bloom of her lips, arched, pouting, and coquette. She set her teeth sharply, and muttered a hot, heavy sacre, or even something worse, as she saw that his eyes had not even remained on her, but were thoughtfully looking down the checkered light and color of the street. She was passionate, she was vain, she was wayward, she was fierce as a little velvet leopard, as a handsome, brilliant plumaged hawk; she had all the faults, as she had all the virtues, of the thorough Celtic race; and, for the moment, she had in instinct--fiery, ruthless, and full of hate--to draw the pistol out of her belt, and teach him with a shot, crash through heart or brain, that girls who were “unsexed” could keep enough of the woman in them not to be neglected with impunity, and could lose enough of it to be able to avenge the negligence by a summary vendetta. But she was a haughty little condottiere, in her fashion. She would not ask for what was not offered her, nor give a rebuke that might be traced to mortification. She only set her two rosebud-lips in as firm a line of wrath and scorn as ever Caesar's or Napoleon's molded themselves into, and spoke in the curt, imperious, generalissimo fashion with which Cigarette before now had rallied a demoralized troop, reeling drunk and mad away from a razzia. “I am a witch! That is, I can put two and two together, and read men, though I don't read the alphabet. Well, one reading is a good deal rarer than the other. So you mean to disobey the Hawk to-night? I like you for that. But listen here--did you ever hear them talk of Marquise?” “No!” “Parbleu!” swore the vivandiere in her wrath, “you look on at a bamboula as if it were only a bear-cub dancing, and can only give one 'yes' and 'no,' as if one were a drummer-boy. Bah! are those your Paris courtesies?” “Forgive me, ma belle! I thought you called yourself our comrade, and would have no 'fine manners.' There is no knowing how to please you.” He might have pleased her simply and easily enough, if he had only looked up with a shade of interest to that most picturesque picture, bright as a pastel portrait, that was hung above him in the old tumble-down Moorish stonework. But his thoughts were with other things; and a love scene with this fantastic little Amazon did not attract him. The warm, ripe, mellow little wayside cherry hung directly in his path, with the sun on its bloom, and the free wind tossing it merrily; but it had no charm for him. He was musing rather on that costly, delicate, brilliant-hued, hothouse blossom that could only be reached down by some rich man's hand, and grew afar on heights where never winter chills, nor summer tan, could come too rudely on it.