"Coquetry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... grandeur which is more dazzling than genuine; and, indeed, we could expect nothing else from a cento of Lucan's hyperbolical antitheses. These bravuras of rhetoric are strung together on the thread of a clumsy plot. The intrigues of Ptolemy, and the ambitious coquetry of his sister Cleopatra, have a petty and miserable appearance alongside of the picture of the fate of the great Pompey, the vengeance-breathing sorrow of his wife, and the magnanimous compassion of Caesar. Scarcely has the conqueror paid the last honours to the reluctant shade ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... of coquetry she had ever deliberately displayed; and at the same instant she became aware that something new had been suddenly awakened in her—something which stole like a glow through her veins, exciting her ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... her time, and from which she adopted ideas as different as possible from those which she might have obtained from the invaluable and affectionate instructions of an excellent mother; and the freaks of which she was sometimes guilty, rendered her not unjustly liable to the charge of affectation and coquetry. But the little lass had sense and shrewdness enough to keep her failings out of sight of her godfather, to whom she was sincerely attached; and so high she stood in his favour, that, at his recommendation, she obtained permission to visit the ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... concern for her comfort, and she gave him full credit. Coquetry was no part of Miss Alicia's equipment, but no woman likes to be utterly neglected on the care-taking side, or to be transformed ruthlessly into a man-companion whose well-being may be brusquely ignored. And this young athlete in brown duck shooting-coat and ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... and dignity to Sissy. In Split it bred and fostered a spirit of coquetry; she believed herself to be very French in long skirts. "I'll just say she said 'Yes' when I asked her. She never knows what ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... the ballroom Lenox was aware of his wife,—the focal point in a circle of men, distributing her favours with a smiling impartiality that was, in itself, a delicate form of coquetry, while Garth stood sentinel beside her, with an unmistakable suggestion of 'No Thoroughfare,' which he could assume to a nicety; and which Lenox noted with a curse at the ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... where she was, and not merely because her shoes were off and she could not well get away, but because it was not in her nature not to wish every one to be happy and comfortable. She was as far as any woman can be from coquetry, but she could not see any manner of man without trying to please him. "I'm sorry he's isn't here," she said, and then, as there seemed nothing for him to answer, she ventured, "It's ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... family of Captain Thayer, she was thrown much into the society of a young girl then visiting Mrs. Thayer. She soon began to show much partiality for Deborah (or Robert), and as she seemed to be versed in the arts of coquetry, Robert felt no scruples in paying close attention to one so volatile and fond of flirtation; she also felt a natural curiosity to learn within how short a time a maiden's fancy ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... her heart; but she had a presentiment that she should cry, if her love found vent; and here forty pairs of eyes were on them, and salt water seemed superfluous. Besides, Debby had not breathed the air of coquetry so long without a touch of the infection; and the love of power, that lies dormant in the meekest woman's breast, suddenly awoke ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... got up to take a long walk, which often relieves me when suffering from that malady; and, on ascending the stairs, I met our landlord's eldest daughter, a tall, graceful girl of twenty. I found she was coming down backwards, which I took to be a mere girlish freak, or perhaps a piece of coquetry, practised on myself: but I afterwards found, that about the time the earth is at the full, the whole family pursued the same course, and were very scrupulous in making their steps in this awkward and inconvenient ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... answered slowly, for he was thinking of the Gerty whom he had known—of her audacious cynicism, her startling frankness, her suggestive coquetry. Was it possible that this creature of red and white flesh, of sweetness and irony, was really a multiple personality—the possessor of divers souls? Had he seen only the surface of her because it was to the surface alone that he had appealed? Or was it that Laura's ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... I longed only to return to the banks of Mud Creek; and chafed at the necessary delay that hindered me from gratifying my wish. Even the generous hospitality of Colonel Kipp—amiable under the influence of golden dreams—even the smiles of the simpering Alvina, and the more brave coquetry of Car'line—now become a decided admirer of my yellow buttons—were not sufficient to preserve my spirits from ennui. Only at meals did I make my appearance at the hotel—at all other times, seeking to soothe the impassioned pulsations of my heart in the dark depths ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... disadvantage; even the money support expected and tacitly promised was refused. The Czar knew that he had been betrayed by England in the interest of Austria: he did not know how grave had been Napoleon's coquetry in a similar suit. He was as much bent on the emancipation of Russian commerce from English tyranny as Napoleon on the "freedom of the seas," the revolutionary phrase for British humiliation. The conversation may well have taken ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... will get no other," said Elizabeth, with a ring of sincerity in her voice that left no room for coquetry. "I am sorry, but I ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Baskerville, of Greenwich Village, she of the fluffy brown hair and the pert little dimples and the bold terrifying ideas, she who had so ploughed up the soul of Jimmie Higgins and almost broken up the Higgins' home—here she was, employing a new variety of coquetry, by which she compelled three soldiers with rifles and bayonets to devote their exclusive attention ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... heroine more true to nature than his theories have allowed him to make his hero. And his theories about girls are quite as good and quite as different from the fashionable practice of his day as those about boys. It is curious how his ideas approach the American customs. A certain coquetry, he says, is allowable in marriageable girls; amusement is their principal business. Married women have the cares of home to occupy them, and have no longer to seek husbands. Rousseau would let the girls appear in public, ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... at her in astonishment. There was not the slightest trace of coyness, coquetry, or even raillery in her clear, honest eyes, and yet it would seem as if she had taken his proposition in its fullest sense as a matrimonial declaration, and actually referred him to her father. He was pleased, frightened, ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... herself, and turning a little away, so that she could pretend not to know that he was looking at her, raised her arm to smooth her hair, lifting it and pushing a loosened hairpin into place. After all . . . This was Isabel's first venture into coquetry. ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... silenced and shamefaced, at the door. He had a handsome stone put up for his two children, which may be seen in Castlewood churchyard to this very day; and before a year was out his own name was upon the stone. In the presence of Death, that sovereign ruler, a woman's coquetry is scared; and her jealousy will hardly pass the boundaries of that grim kingdom. 'Tis entirely of the earth that passion, and expires in the cold ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... shining, and his air so impassioned, that she blushed with pleasure. The noble damsel herself was more charming than ever. Her magnificent blond hair was plaited in a ravishing manner, she was dressed entirely in that sky blue which becomes fair people so well, a bit of coquetry which she had learned from Colombe, and her eyes were swimming in that languor of love which becomes them ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... of any want of petting at last," she returned, delighted at his indirect recognition of the difference. Then the daring, the archness, and caprice that make coquetry in some women, and lurk a divine possibility in all, came out in her; the sweetness, kept back by the whole strength of her pride, overflowed that broken barrier now, and she seemed to lavish this revelation of herself upon him with a sort of ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... saying: 'You're quite right, Pettikins, and you ought to have the thanks of the community for showing our ladies how to dress rationally on horseback. It's not only sensible and safe but it's modest—a plain pair of riding breeches, no coquetry, no frills, nothing but ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... courting by the quarter, "here a little and there a little," is one of the greatest evils of the day. This getting a little in love with Julia, and then a little with Eliza, and a little more with Mary,—this fashionable flirtation and coquetry of both sexes—is ruinous to the domestic affections; besides, effectually preventing the formation of true connubial love. I consider this dissipation of the affections one of the greatest sins against Heaven, ourselves, ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... white shirt, smoking a cigarette, and resting his bare feet upon the dashboard. Behind the curtain of a passing quilez you can catch a glimpse of brown eyes, raven hair, and olive-tinted cheeks, displayed with all the coquetry of a Manila belle. A Filipino family in a rickety cart, tilted at an impossible angle, are drawn by a moth-eaten pony, mostly bones. Public conveyances—if these are not indeed a myth—are most exasperating. You can never find one when you want it, even at the "Public Carriage Station." If by chance ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... whole body was blackened. Nor is the extravagance of the methods, which the militant lady follows to put over her program, so foreign to her nature as it may seem. The suffragette adapts to her needs a form of feminine coquetry as old as the world. To defy and denounce the male has always been one of woman's ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... laugh is silvery. She points to a gay mountaineer, who is tripping up to her merrily. Why does Glyndon feel jealous? Why, when she speaks again, does he shake his head no more? He offers his hand; Fillide blushes, and takes it with a demure coquetry. What! is it so, indeed! They whirl into the noisy circle of the revellers. Ha! ha! is not this better than distilling herbs, and breaking thy brains on Pythagorean numbers? How lightly Fillide bounds along! How her lithesome waist supples itself to thy circling ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... ladies outbid each other to carry his work upon their very fans. Those vast fortunes, however, seem to change hands very rapidly. And Antony's new manner? I am unable even to divine it—to conceive the trick and effect of it—at all. Only, something of lightness and coquetry I discern there, at variance, methinks, [17] with his own singular gravity and even sadness of mien and mind, more answerable to the stately apparelling of the age of Henry the Fourth, or of Lewis the Thirteenth, in these old, ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... Saint-Hereen had been away for nearly six months on a political mission. The Countess, whether from sheer giddiness, or in obedience to the countless instincts of woman's coquetry, or to essay its power—with all the vanity of a frivolous fine lady, all the capricious waywardness of a child—was amusing herself, during her husband's absence, by playing with the passion of a clever but heartless man, distracted ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... demands of the poet, and then she did so in spite of her honor and her duty as the wife of another. But this delay but opened the way for an endless succession of gallant words and acts, wherein the art of coquetry was called upon to play no unimportant part. Between these two people there was no sincere friendship such as existed later between Boccaccio and Joanna, and they were but playing with the dangerous fire of passion, which they ever fanned to ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... the robin courting, and have always been astonished and amused at the utter coldness and indifference of the female. The females of every species of bird, however, I believe, have this in common,—they are absolutely free from coquetry, or any airs and wiles whatever. In most cases, Nature has given the song and the plumage to the other sex, and all the embellishing and acting is done by the ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... twenty-one a man is a musical instrument given to the other sex, but it is not as instruments learned at school, for when She sits down to it she cannot tell what tune she is about to play. That is because she has no notion of what the instrument is capable. Babbie's kind- heartedness, her gaiety, her coquetry, her moments of sadness, had been a witch's fingers, and Gavin was still trembling under their touch. Even in being taken to task by her there was a charm, for every pout of her mouth, every shake of her head, said, "You like me, and therefore you have given me the right ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... you not keep one?" she said, bending over her nosegay as if absorbed in its arrangement. "They are so rare that I hardly know how to spare any." Which was a bit of innocent coquetry ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... a few steps in silence. Then she turned and spoke softly over her shoulder. There was not a touch of coquetry in her simple manner, yet it had an engaging quality all ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... her subtle criticism is alert, and this woman of the East marvels at the women of the West, 'the beautiful worldly women of the West,' whom she sees walking in the Cascine, 'taking the air so consciously attractive in their brilliant toilettes, in the brilliant coquetry of their manner!' She finds them 'a little incomprehensible,' 'profound artists in all the subtle intricacies of fascination,' and asks if these 'incalculable frivolities and vanities and coquetries and caprices' ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... The question with her, now, was how best to voice herself—the self that Jude in no wise knew. Womanlike, she did not want to plunge into what might prove an abyss. She wanted to take her own way, but with a half-unconscious coquetry she desired to drag her captives ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... disinclined to be on terms of closer intimacy with him. And as she made the advance why should he not accept, if not the help, yet the offer of the help she had almost made? That would and could bind him to nothing. He understood her well enough to have no slightest suspicion of any coquetry such as a fool like Cornelius would have imagined. He was nevertheless a fool, also, only of another and deeper sort. It needs brains to be ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... had been manifested an expression of mingled curiosity, coquetry and banter on Vaudrey's appearance in their midst. His presence in the manager's box had been noticed and his coming to the greenroom expected. Every one had hurried thither. Sulpice was pointed out. He was the cynosure of all eyes. On the divans beneath the mirror, some young, ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... wore the softer expression of those last few moments. Lenore waved her hand, and he smiled. The moment was natural. Youth to youth! Lenore felt it. She marveled that he did not. A sweet devil of wilful coquetry possessed her. ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... said Ampere, 'Alceste. Probably five years afterwards. By that time he must have got tired of his desert and she of her coquetry.' ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... my dear husband." The cup from which he drank his last draught was on the fireplace; caps and false hair were tossed, at a later period, over the glass globes which covered these precious relics. After Bridau's death not a trace of coquetry, not even a woman's ordinary care of her person, was left in the young widow of thirty-five. Parted from the only man she had ever known, esteemed, and loved, from one who had never caused her the slightest unhappiness, she was no longer ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... apron which she was flapping up and down on her dark red skirt. The other, a short, dark creature, whose face was still red from having been scrubbed with soap, was enveloped as to her head, with the coquetry of a fishwoman, in a white knitted hood ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... image by rote, and as I conned the traits in memory it seemed as if I read her very heart. She was dressed with something of her mother's coquetry and love of positive colour. Her robe, which I knew she must have made with her own hands, clung about her with a cunning grace. After the fashion of that country, besides, her bodice stood open in the middle, in a long ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... also love: he was convinced of that. His companion in adventures which she shared with a good fellowship that excluded any awkwardness between them, she had suddenly taken fright; and a sort of modesty, mingled with a certain coquetry; was impelling ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... him in time to prevent this most unhappy declaration? Would it not have been kinder to have drawn back in the first months of their intimacy, and have interposed some barrier of dignified reserve that would have kept him silent for ever? But no! she had drawn him on: not by coquetry—Audrey was far too high-minded to coquet with any man—but simply by the warm friendliness of her manner. She had liked his company; she had accepted his attentions, not once had she repulsed him; and ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... but not intellectual, and scarcely beautiful. It pleased rather by its life and motion and oddity than by its beauty. She looked at her companion in a peculiar way—trustfully, almost reverently—and yet with a touch of coquetry which seemed perfectly native to every turn of her body or ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... And they were merry eyes, smiling, and deep with secrets no man could hope to solve. Perhaps she deemed it only fair that I should look at her as she had been observing me; perhaps it was but the coquetry of the "eternal feminine" conscious of her own attraction, but she sat there silent, the lashes shading her eyes, the clear light of the dawn upon her face. I cannot describe what I saw, only it was a young face, the skin clear and glowing with health, the nose beautifully moulded, ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... a long silence. She summoned her coquetry that she called pride. The blue, blue forest at the edge of her sight tilted a little like a ship, the watery hill-country rolled ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... manner towards him. Simplicity verges on coquetry. Was she flirting? he said to himself. No forcible translation of favour into suspicion was able to uphold such a theory. The performance had been too well done to be anything but real. It had the defects without which nothing ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... Protector of that Innocence which he so long and so indefatigably labour'd to supplant: And all this without ever having entertain'd the least previous Design or Thought for that Purpose: No Art used to inflame him, no Coquetry practised to tempt or intice him, and no Prudery or Affectation to tamper with his Passions; but, on the contrary, artless and unpractised in the Wiles of the World, all her Endeavours, and even all her Wishes, tended only to render herself as un-amiable as she could in his ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... affair, had not wholly lost courage; and I felt sure that Mlle. Blanche also—Mlle. Blanche who was not only as deeply involved as the other two, but also expectant of becoming Madame General and an important legatee—would not lightly surrender the position, but would use her every resource of coquetry upon the old lady, in order to afford a contrast to the impetuous Polina, who was difficult to understand, and lacked the ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... mood had passed away, and I feared to say that I could see no reason other than coquetry for her conduct, I feared the red-haired tigress would ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... in the gardens had been decidedly abrupt, and possibly it signified more serious offence than at the time he attributed to her. It was so difficult to be sure of anything in regard to Miss Nunn. If another woman had acted thus he would have judged it coquetry. But perhaps Rhoda was quite incapable of anything of that kind. Perhaps she took herself so very seriously that the mere suspicion of banter in his talk had moved her to grave resentment. Or again, she might be half ashamed to meet him ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... fastening a picturesque girdle of leaves around the unrepentant Eve,—for all the world like a modern husband fastening his wife's gown,—while she for the first time gathers up her long fair hair. Her attitude is full of innocent yet indescribable coquetry. The passion for self-adornment had already taken possession of her soul. Before her lies a future of many cares and some compensations. She is going to work and she is going to weep, but she is also going to dress. The ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... and the young lady was amused by it after the manner of her sex. Being very downright himself, Mr. Holt had no idea how much admiration is required to fill the measure of a proposal of marriage in a red-coat's resolve, or how much harmless coquetry lies dormant in the ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... of less delicacy to a European apprehension. At bimbangs the women often put on their dancing dress in the public hall, letting that garment which they mean to lay aside dexterously drop from under, as the other passes over the head, but sometimes, with an air of coquetry, displaying as if by chance enough to warm youthful imaginations. Both men and women anoint themselves before company when they prepare to dance; the women their necks and arms, and the men their breasts. They ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... God-bring him not to his will of me nor to me defilement decree after purity!" Then she went up to him and made a show of fondness for him and sat down by his side and coaxed him, saying, "O my lord, what is this aversion thou displayest to me? Is it pride or coquetry on thy part? But the current byword saith, 'An the salam-salutation be little in demand, the sitters salute those who stand."[FN4] So if, O my lord, thou come not to me neither accost me, I will go to thee and accost thee." Said he, "To thee belong favour and kindness, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... your Caesar and carry it through," Frederick wrote to Jordan after the invasion of Silesia. Gaily, with light step as if going to a dance, the King entered upon the fields of his victories. There was still cheerful enjoyment of life, sweet coquetry with verse, and intellectual conversation with his intimates on the pleasures of the day, on God, nature, and immortality, which he considered the spice of life. But the great task upon which he had entered began ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... laughed as he strolled away; but Christie was all the more amusing for her want of coquetry, and soon after he tried her again. The great hotel was all astir one evening with bustle, light, and music; for the young people had a hop, as an appropriate entertainment for a melting July night. With no taste for such folly, even if health had not forbidden it, Mr. Fletcher lounged ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... point of material prosperity, and I myself had reached the age of seventeen. I was still innocent and merry like a child; tended my garden or ran upon the hills in glad simplicity; gave not a thought to coquetry or to material cares; and if my eye rested on my own image in a mirror or some sylvan spring, it was to seek and recognise the features of my parents. But the fears which had long pressed on others were now to be laid on my youth. I had thrown myself, one sultry, cloudy afternoon, on a divan; ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... Her eyes were fine, and full of coquetry. Her figure was all that a woman's should be. Yes, the camp liked the look of her, and so it set out to give Scipio ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... her veil, so as with some coquetry to display a bold Roman profile, a full dark bright eye, and a cheek over whose natural olive art shed a ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... with feminine coquetry, put on a white waistcoat, which suited him better with the coat than a black one, sent for the hairdresser to give him a finishing touch with the curling iron, for he had preserved his hair, and started very early in order to show his eagerness ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... hoops, the stiff ruff and the stomacher, the farthingale and high heeled shoes, and a thousand times more than all, did she desire to be released from the artificial and to her unsatisfactory life, from the flattery, the coquetry, the idle, envious tattle, and to be back again with Cecil, in her simple, healthy attire, and ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... supple waist from side to side in time with the passionate music; now closing her eyes languorously; now opening them wide and smiling at him tenderly over the top of her fan, a graceful accomplice to her pretty coquetry. At last she surrenders to the wooing, the happy pair dancing away together while the music plays faster and faster until at last it stops with a great crash, that, we trust, not being symbolical of infelicity in wedlock. The dance was very well done, and the native audience enjoyed ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... and right, Then enters, and beholds this beauty bright Seated upon a pile of costly skins, Embroidering her hunter's moccasins! He stands abashed—she glances up to greet His hasty entrance with a smile so sweet, Then drops her lashes with such coquetry. Amazed, he thinks, "No mortal woman she, Who does not fear a stranger entering so! Rather some teasing fairy, or a doe In woman's form." Abruptly he exclaims "What are you—a Dakota?" As he names That warlike tribe, at last she starts, and shakes Her head; then with her slender fingers ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... lift her down, with no sign of prudishness or coquetry, and he led the horse uphill while she followed. Her attitude pleased him, because he had no desire for philandering, although he was content to act as protector and guide. Still, while he adapted ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... succeed. This last suggestion was made timidly, as if she feared to hurt the pride of the scapegrace by proposing such a plan. There was not a word or an accent of reproach in all she said, and I heartily forgave the little coquetry, affectation, and vulgarity I had formerly remarked in her, in consideration of the intuitive delicacy and good feeling she now displayed. Truly, thought I, it is humbling to us, the bearded and baser moiety of humankind, to contrast our ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... said King, with scholastic coquetry. "We depend upon you to give us the meaning. This is an examination, Beetle mine, not a guessing-competition. You will find your ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... been interpreted as purposely introductory to an intimate scene, notwithstanding that it was made in a thoroughly matter-of-fact tone and without the slightest trace of coquetry. But Johnson did not make the mistake of misconstruing her words, puzzled though he was to find a clue to them. His curiosity about her was intense, and it showed plainly in the voice ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... good-humor characteristic of his class, he insisted upon exchanging his own riding-horse, "Five Spot," for the sorry mule which the Duchess rode. But even this act did not draw the party into any closer sympathy. The young woman readjusted her somewhat draggled plumes with a feeble, faded coquetry; Mother Shipton eyed the possessor of "Five Spot" with malevolence, and Uncle Billy included the whole party ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... folks are as often wrong as the rest of us. I suppose you looked for cold-blooded assurance, tempered by what one might call experienced coquetry?" ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... neck of her dirty basque and flung a purple wool shawl over her shoulders. Her spirit had been too long broken for her to rebel consciously against her daughter's authority; but her mind was so constituted that the sense of order was missing, and the pretty coquetry of youth, which had masqueraded once as the more enduring quality of self-respect, was extinguished in the five and thirty penitential years of her marriage. She had a small vacant face, where the pink and white had run into muddiness, a mouth ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... eyelids show of Kohl and coquetry! * By what thy shape displays of lissome symmetry! By what thy liplets store of honey dew and wine! * By what thy mind adorns of gracious kindly gree! To me thy sight dream-visioned, O my hope! exceeds * The happiest ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... told that the ladies here would frequently divert themselves by going a little aside with our gentlemen, as if they meant to be kind to them, and then would run away laughing at them. Whether this was chastity or coquetry, I shall not pretend to determine; nor is it material, since the consequences ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... on a very spirited Limousin mare, which she amused herself by exciting and quieting with a touching coquetry to please her old father. For the first two hours she hardly left the carriage at all, and the chevalier, now full of new life, gazed on her with smiles and tears of love. Just as in the daily rotation of our globe, ere passing into night, we take leave of the radiant ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... every possible and impossible factory. Unpractical and reserved as she was on ordinary occasions, she could be full of artifice and coquetry whenever she wished to gain access to a steam bakery and particular as she generally was about her toilette, she would come away again sooty and grimy if thereby she could procure for Rafael some insight into mechanics. She shrank from foul air as from the cholera, yet ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... instinct. The soul in this race is at once primitive and serious. Women are disposed to follow the noble dream called duty. "Thus, supported by innocence and conscience, they introduce into love a profound and upright sentiment, abjure coquetry, vanity, and flirtation; they do not lie, they are not affected. When they love they are not tasting a forbidden fruit, but are binding themselves for their whole life. Thus understood, love becomes almost a holy thing; the spectator no longer wishes to be malicious ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... lively and amiable, and used her eyes for saying things which I could not then understand. It was only later, when she one day informed me in conversation that the only thing a girl was allowed to indulge in was coquetry—coquetry of the eyes, I mean—that I understood those strange contortions of her features which to every one else had seemed a matter for no surprise at all. Lubotshka also had begun to wear what was almost ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... Havana—the most Spanish region to be found in the New World. So she preferred to feign terror rather than cast in my teeth indisposition or difficulty, coquetry or duty, like a Parisian woman. By her golden eyes, how glad ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... behoves a girl then to choose her man carefully, and not to place herself in any false position towards him. If he is not chivalrous enough to take a delicately conveyed hint, he will only imagine that she is playing a more subtle game of coquetry, and by redoubling his attentions make himself the reverse of agreeable. No man with any regard for the most elementary rules of etiquette would either embarrass a lady by keeping up a tone that she had even indirectly discouraged, or insult her ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... little while she will have put on the careworn look of the Southern summer. Many a plant now in splendid bloom, animated by the spirit of loveliness that presides over the law of reproduction, will soon be casting its seed and bringing its brief destiny to a close. Now all is coquetry, beauty, and ravishment. The rock-hiving bees, unconscious instruments of a great purpose, are yellow with pollen and laden with honey. They find more, infinitely more, nectar than they can carry away. The days are long, and every hour is full of joy. But already ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... suppose this effect was the result of the Spanish mode rather than of individual sophistication; just as the succession of lazy poses and bendings were the result of a racial feminine instinct rather than of conscious personal coquetry. Certainly we four red-shirted tramps were poor enough game. Nevertheless, whatever the motive, the effect was certainly real enough. She was alluring rather than charming, with her fan and her rebosa, her veiled glances, her languorous, bold poses, and the single red flower in her ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... sparkling from under her begrimed helmet, the effect is not bad; on the contrary, the masquerade is piquant. No need to mention the ribbons that we knot under our wide, square collars for becomingness, our coquetry "under difficulties," nor the gauntleted gloves wherewith we protect our hands, nor the daintiness of the little boots that peep from the loose trousers, which have something Turkish in their cut. Mon Amie, with her rosy blushes, reminds me of a jocund miller's boy;—as for myself, well, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... And no sooner had I screwed myself into the commander's chair, which was fixed to the floor at the head of the narrow table, and found the tea-tray almost on my lap, than a wave of memory from our childhood came sweeping back on me, and I could not help giving way to the coquetry which lies hidden in every girl's heart so as to find out how much Martin had ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... her large, clear eyes, and that absence of coquetry or changed expression in her beautiful face which might have stood for indifference or dignity as she said: "I don't know. I am waiting ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... rarely could she surrender herself; and her tenderness was ever on the alert, with a smile that seemed to know and tell everything, against the passionate impulses that Christophe found it hard to suppress. She had her weaknesses, moments of abandonment to the caprice of the minute, a coquetry at which she herself mocked but never fought against. She was never in revolt against things, nor against herself: she had come to a gentle fatalism, and she was altogether kind, but ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... And the coquetry faded from her eyes as her glance wandered waterward and became fixed on some object invisible and ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... into one's mind, through a superficial complexity of more reverent preconceptions, that she was an extremely clever coquette—this, surely, was not to think well! Bernard had luminous glimpses of another situation, in which Angela Vivian's coquetry should meet with a different appreciation; but just now it was not an item to be entered on the credit side of Wright's account. Bernard wiped his pen, mentally speaking, as he made this reflection, and felt like a grizzled old book-keeper, of incorruptible probity. He saw ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... loud, are surrounded by young men, while the modest girl, who holds aloof, is apparently neglected, that their daughters are more admired; but this is a great mistake. Men like that boldness, that coquetry, that dash, if I may use the term, because it amuses for the time being; but although they may pay attention to women on that account, marrying them is quite another affair. No: the modest retiring girl, who is apparently passed by, becomes the wife; the others are flattered before their faces, and ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... devoted admirer, whom I, ultimately had the honor of calling my father. Your pet vagrant, Edna, is no simpleton; she can take care of her own interests, and, accept my word for it, intends to do so. She is only practising a little harmless coquetry—toying with her victim, as fish circle round and round the bait which they fully intend to swallow. Were she Aphaea herself, I should say Gordon's success is as fixed as ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... a mistress of her art, and knows better: and what a picture of her triumphant petulance, her imperious and imperial coquetry, is ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... insincerity. Besides, the thought of being experimented upon in this way, did not in the least tend to soften his feelings towards the fair one. He believed in frankness, honesty and reciprocal sincerity. He liked a truthful, ingenuous mind, and turned instinctively from all artifice, coquetry or affectation. ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... Stella, but she was not prepared to hear of a gossipping intercourse over the newly arrived Punches, etc., carried on in the early morning with Redstone, not only by Bernard but Angela. She was but eleven years old, so it was no worse than the taste of childish underhand coquetry and giggling; there was no fear of its continuance after Felix's return, and, indeed, good old Mr Froggatt had kept guard by coming in two hours earlier ever since the discovery; but the propensity dismayed Wilmet more than all that had yet happened, and on this head she thought it right ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her associates, equally aggrieved and avenged, would applaud her course. But with AEnone, brought up in a provincial town, under the shelter of her own native purity and innocence, no such idea could find countenance. Even the thought which sometimes dimly presented itself, that by some harmless coquetry she might perhaps excite her husband's jealousy, and thereby chance to win back his love, was one which she always stifled in its beginning as weak ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... than anybody else? What did she mean? how much did she mean? I knew that she spoke heedlessly at times—that she possessed no intellectual discipline, no mental accuracy to measure the force of her words. I knew, too, that coquetry and feminine instinct impelled her to use her strongest weapons against any masculine adversary. Yet, subtracting all these influences from her speech, it was still left fraught with delicious meaning. I had no wish to wrong Jack, but my vanity was tickled ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... for a young girl, were admirably suited to the woman and harmonized beautifully with her tall and statuesque figure. Sometimes, in the poems of her youth, she spoke as an authority on the subject of "the happiness of being beautiful." It was not coquetry with her, it was the sentiment of harmony; her beautiful soul was happy in dwelling in ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... always wore one of sad, monotonous gray. Every winter they came to Warwick and sold cloaks of worldly colours to the rich young women of the town, seeking money for their dwindling settlement. In the contradiction between the demureness of outline and the warmth of colour the wearer found a weapon of coquetry. ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... the peace of the same husbands, that he would forbid coquetry, as well as lace, and gold or silver embroidery. I have bought the law on purpose, so that Isabella may read it aloud; and, by and by, when she is at leisure, it shall be our entertainment after supper. (Perceiving Valre). Well, Mr. ...
— The School for Husbands • Moliere
... were sitting together, he giving her a first lesson in the art of smoking a cigarette. He had told her playfully that every man, woman, and child in Cuba was a smoker, and she had besought him to let her begin, and now, with infinite coquetry, was taking ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the foot of the steps and looking up at him with timid coquetry). I shall go round and wait in full view of the library windows. Be sure you draw father's attention to me. If you are a moment longer than five minutes, I shall go in and fetch you, ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... at the sweet girl. There was not a particle of coquetry in her request. Dark shadows were under her eyes, two pink spots burnt in her pretty cheeks and her hands ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... naturally, without coquetry. It was a fine experience for her to be treated with that thing some women never know—respect. She warmed ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... modestly confined, and her ears healthily protected, by the matronly safeguard of the real construction. She ceases to be decorously dressed only when the material becomes too flimsy to answer such essential purpose, and the flaunting pendants or ribands can only answer the ends of coquetry or ostentation. Similarly, an architect may deepen or enlarge, in fantastic exaggeration, his original Westmoreland gable into Rouen porch, and his original square roof into Coventry spire; but he must not put within his splendid ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... spokesman and interpreter, scarcely allowed him time to eat. Their restless, sparkling black eyes, excited the admiration of the ladies. "Do you think black eyes the most expressive?" said Lady Mabel to L'Isle; and, with a natural coquetry, she turned her own blue orbs full upon him. How else could he judge, ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... the astonished lady, with upraised hands. 'That girl will surely be an old maid. She has no taste. Not like him, when he is already deep in love with you? Ulrica, this is arrant coquetry.' ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... due to her eyes; she had most wonderful eyes, and I doubt if any man or many women ever met them in a full look without feeling a little stir of pulse—whether it was in the lashes, or in the sweet straightforwardness of look, utterly devoid of coquetry, or in the depth of the gray, or in what; certain it is that no one ever saw Miss Northrop without talking of her ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... walks two or more miles across the fields to church, knowing full well that some one will be lounging about a certain stile, or lying on the sward by a gate waiting for her. The practice of coquetry is as delightful in the country lane as in the saloons of wealth, though the ways in which it exhibits itself may be rude in comparison. So that love is sometimes the detaining force which keeps the girl in the country. Some of the young ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... that coquetry which somehow or other is in the heart of every young girl, "I have often been sorry that I am not able to read, but never so much so as when your housekeeper brought me your letter. I kept the paper in my hands, ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... Ficino and Landino—amiable browsers in the Medicean park along with himself—who found his Latin prose style elegant and masculine; and the terrible Joseph Scaliger, who was to pronounce him totally ignorant of Latinity, was at a comfortable distance in the next century. But when was the fatal coquetry inherent in superfluous authorship ever quite contented with the ready praise of friends? That critical supercilious Politian—a fellow-browser, who was far from amiable—must be made aware that the solid secretary ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... done ever since the beginning of history. He saw the object of attachment several times one day, did not see her at all the next, met her when he least expected to do so, missed her when hints and signs as to where she should be at a given hour almost amounted to an appointment. This mild coquetry was perhaps fair enough under the circumstances of their being so closely lodged, and Stockdale put up with it as philosophically as he was able. Being in her own house, she could, after vexing him or disappointing him of her presence, ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... unoccupied and uninterested girl into their excitements. Those whose minds are of too active and vivacious a nature to live on without an object, may too easily find one in the dangerous and selfish amusements of coquetry—in the seeking for admiration, and its enjoyment when obtained. The very woman who might have been the most happy herself in the enjoyment of intellectual pursuits, and the most extensively useful to others, is often the one who, from misdirected energies ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... she known the full effect of the encounter she would have moved heaven and earth to get here in a natural manner. The power of her face all lost, the charm of her emotions all disguised, the fascinations of her coquetry denied existence, nothing but a voice left to her; she had a sense of the doom of Echo. "Nobody here respects me," she said. She had overlooked the fact that, in coming as a boy among other boys, she would be treated as a boy. The slight, though of her own causing, and ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... no help of mine. He made his way leisurely past the great fire, walking with wonderful mimicry of a woman's gait, and he kept his face well in the shelter of the blanket in a way that suggested coquetry rather than disguise. ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... by her side, and, having restored her nerves with champagne, proceeded to agitate them again with the warmest protestations of affection. The child with the day's experience before her, only half-believed him, but the spirit of coquetry woke up, and she resolved to try and make him care for her as much as ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... Lily, Broken Straw, Witch Hazel and Colored Daisy—"Your folly and coquetry have broken the spell of ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... her feet; and now it was the order of the dance that she should come into the middle of the circle and dance alone while she passed in review, the dancers circling about her, until she made her choice. Idalia laughed silently to herself; she cast a glance full of bewitching coquetry at Berezowski, then swaying gracefully in the dance, she glided towards him and laid the cushion at his feet, then the circle broke up, and the chosen man was left alone. Berezowski reddened to the ears for joy; his ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... Just see with what admirable stupidity girls lend themselves to reap the benefit of the education which is imposed upon them in France; we give them in charge to nursery maids, to companions, to governesses who teach them twenty tricks of coquetry and false modesty, for every single noble and true idea which they impart to them. Girls are brought up as slaves, and are accustomed to the idea that they are sent into the world to imitate their grandmothers, to breed canary birds, to make herbals, to water little Bengal rose-bushes, to ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... Imperial Authority. Camellia Spotless purity. Cissus Changeable. Centaurea Your looks deceive me. Cineraria Singleness of heart. Daisy, Field I will think of it. Dahlia Dignity. Daffodil Unrequited love. Dandelion Coquetry. Everlasting Always remembered. Everlasting Pea Wilt thou go with me. Ebony Blackness. Fuchsia Humble love. Foxglove Insincerity. Fern Sincerity. Fennel Strength. Forget-me-not For ever remembered. Fraxinella Fire. Geranium, Ivy Fond of dancing. Geranium, Oak A melancholy mind. ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan
... woman—Mrs. Dicky, for example, or—" he saw Miss Cobb's curler on the mantel and picked it up—"or even Miss Cobb," he said. "Coquetry and selfishness without maternal instinct. How much of Miss Cobb's virtue is training and environment, Minnie, not to mention lack of temptation, and how much was ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Finance had flamed into genius in this leonine creature who was as much her mother's inferior in looks as her father's superior in intelligence. Mingled with this masculinity of mind and appearance was an egotism, a coquetry, a directness of thought and action that combined to make a curious personality. It was amusing to note with what assiduity she showered her attentions on Mr. Morris, the man of the world, of whom she had heard much, and with what polite indifference she dismissed ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... situation had extinguished in the girl all coquetry and capriciousness. Frederick almost forgot what he had suffered on her account and in what fatal dependence he had been upon this creature only a short ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... not added the dangerous desire to please, and the wish to hold other hearts than the royal one she had enslaved, in thraldom, all might, perhaps, have been well. But, alas like many other beautiful women, she had a strong tendency to coquetry. How severely she suffered for it, it is the purpose of this history to relate. An excellent description of her has been given by a contemporary writer, the Comte de Chateaubriand, who, while somewhat disparaging her personal attractions, ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... response lit either face. She read condemnation in both pairs of eyes. For the first time in her life she felt daunted, humiliated. She knew nothing more beyond the fact that in deliberate coquetry she had pitted brother against brother, and that something cruel and tragical had happened for which she was being judged. Neither spoke. She summoned her outer dignity, tossed her pretty head, and went out by the end door which Austin in cold politeness held open for her. Then she mounted to ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... surrounded by fleecy clouds. A silk rose-colored skirt, caught up in rich and graceful folds by her little hand, gave majesty to her erect figure, the movement of which, harmonizing with her curving neck, displayed all the triumphs of vanity and satisfied coquetry. Isagani appeared to be rather disgusted, for so many curious eyes fixed upon the beauty of his sweetheart annoyed him. The stares seemed to him robbery and the ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... coquetry he knew her to be—she had been so from a child; and though this was culpable in a way, he and most others had made more than due allowance, because mother-care and loving surveillance had been withdrawn so soon. For years she had been the spoiled darling of her father and brothers ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Gisela endeavored to get rid of him by an icy front, but this he took for feminine coquetry and his own front was serene. As he had made up his mind to be a dramatist merely because the career appealed acutely to his itching ambition, so did he in due course make up his mind to marry this handsome brunette (what hair he had ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... society of this philosophical woman. But her conscience, or her prudery, not permitting her to tolerate longer a manner of life in which she seemed to detect license, she quitted Ninon, advising her to renounce coquetry, whilst the other was advising her to ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... music, and the subtle picturesqueness which makes the Spanish people unique among the other Latin nations of Europe, came, not from her Gothic, nor her Roman, nor her Phenician ancestry, but from the plains of Arabia; and the guitar and the dance and the castanet, and the charm and the coquetry of her women, are echoes from that far-off land of poetry and romance. Not so the bull-fight! Would you trace to its source that pleasant pastime, you must not go to the East; the Oriental was cruel to man, but not to beast. He would ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele
... now her image by rote, and as I conned the traits in memory it seemed as if I read her very heart. She was dressed with something of her mother's coquetry, and love of positive colour. Her robe, which I know she must have made with her own hands, clung about her with a cunning grace. After the fashion of that country, besides, her bodice stood open in the ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... detected no trace of it. On the contrary, the embarrassment which she could not yet wholly subdue lent her an air of girlish timidity. All in all, Barine was a charming creature, who bewitched men by her vivacity, her grace, and her exquisite voice, not by coquetry and pertness. That she possessed unusual mental endowments Cleopatra did not believe. Barine had only ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... perceive the appropriateness of Charley; but I suppose it is style, for the masculine dress which in Pica and Avice has an air of being worn for mere convenience' sake, and is quite ladylike, especially on Avice, has in her an appearance of defiance and coquetry. Her fox-terrier always shares her room, which therefore is eschewed by her sister, and this has made a change in our arrangements. We had thought the room in our house, which it seems is an object of competition, would suit best for Jane Druce and one of her little sisters; but a ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rubies and carbuncles; toilet-boxes, containing blond sponges, curling-irons, sea-wolves' teeth to polish the nails, the green rouge of Egypt, which turns to a most beautiful pink on touching the skin, powders to darken the eyelashes and eyebrows, and all the refinements that feminine coquetry could invent. Other litters were freighted with purple robes of the finest linen and of all possible shades from the incarnadine hue of the rose to the deep crimson of the blood of the grape; calasires of the linen of Canopus, which is thrown all white into ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... with a small linen collarette, and plain white muslin sleeves buttoned round the wrists. The hands offered to me were small and well-shaped. Her manners were quite as simple as her costume. I never saw a simpler woman. Not a shade of affectation or consciousness, even—not a suffusion of coquetry, not a cigarette to be seen! Two or three young men were sitting with her, and I observed the profound respect with which they listened to every word she said. She spoke rapidly, with a low, unemphatic ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... salute to us all, and, glancing at me with a spice of coquetry, to which she was evidently not unaccustomed, was pleased to observe, that I was ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... or from persuasion of friends, should then have received alteration; you may still be happy in each other. I will therefore only thank you for that openness of heart, which must set free the heart of my son—Had you had the least lurking inclination to coquetry, and could have taken pride in conquests, he might have been an undone man.—We will return to the company—But spare him, my dear: you must not talk much. He will love you, if you do, too fervently ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... destination ere the sun was beneath the horizon. Often during the summer Winthrop gallantly rowed from the quay, with the naive and blithe Beatrice in her jaunty yachting suit, but no coquetry shone from the depths of her azure eyes. Little Less, their jocund confidante and courier (and who was as sagacious as a spaniel), always attended them on these occasions, and whene'er they rambled through ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... People were apt to fancy that she was patient to a degree of indolence. In a word, they expected wonders from her; and Bautru used to say she had already worked a miracle because the most devout had forgotten her coquetry. The Duc d'Orleans, who made a show as if he would have disputed the Regency with the Queen, was contented to be Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom. The Prince de Conde was declared President of the Council, and the Parliament ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... sooner had Dolly declared that she didn't like Mr. Bopp, than she began to discover that she did; and so far from desiring "to slap him," a tendency to regard him with peculiar good-will and tenderness developed itself, much to her own surprise; for with all her coquetry and seeming coldness, Dolly had a right womanly heart of her own, though she had never acknowledged the fact till August Bopp looked at her with so much love and longing in his honest eyes. Then she found a little fear mingling with her ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... call arrant coquetry, such as even Camilla never indulged in. The girl kept out of his way—was absolutely chill and repelling half the evening—throwing herself at the officers from Backsworth, till at last Frank obtained a waltz, and after that ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... attentive to her wishes, offered his arm to lead her into the pleached walks of the illuminated garden. Angelique rose, gathered up her rich train, and with an air of royal coquetry took his arm and accompanied the Intendant on a promenade down the grand alley ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... you might be sorry again that you had said it." It sounded like coquetry, but he knew it was ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... them, was Antoine Watteau (1684-1721), the melancholy youth from French Flanders, who began by painting St. Nicholases at three francs a week and his board, but who soon invented a new manner and became famous as the Peintre des Scenes Galantes. These scenes of coquetry, frivolity and amorous dalliance, with their patched, powdered and scented ladies and gallants, toying with life in a land where, like that of the Lotus Eaters, it seems always afternoon, he clothes with a refined and delicate vesture of grace and fascination. He has a poetic touch for ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... somewhat longer or somewhat more earnestly than usual, were traitors which but too officiously revealed the secret of her heart. She did not even defend herself. She had been too short a time at court and in society to be versed in the strategic arts of love or coquetry. Almost in their first conversation she had confessed, with charming frankness, that everybody was warning her against him, she had been told that he was an extremely dangerous man, she was really a little afraid of him; but a certain slight shiver in the presence of a handsome monster ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... she was, Sue already possessed that subtle power of unconscious coquetry which has distinguished all the other Sue Claytons of all the other Kennedy Squares the South over since the days of Pocahontas. She had kept Oliver's mind away from the subject that engrossed him, and on herself; and when, at last, standing between the big columns of ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... giggle. There was a queer mixture of girlish coquetry and masculine strength about her that was disconcerting. Elizabeth ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... head and looked down sharply into her eyes. He was so used to the coquetry and finesse of women! Was she like the rest? But the eyes she had turned to him were sincere to disquiet, and there was not a ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... which he was labouring. "Do you love me? You have acknowledged it now and then, but always as if you did not mean it. Now you acknowledge that you may some day, and this time as if you did mean it. What is the truth? Tell me, without coquetry or dissembling, for I am in dead earnest, and—-" He paused, choked, and turned toward the window where but a few minutes before he had taken that solemn oath. The remembrance of it seemed to come back with the movement. Flushing with a new agitation, he wheeled ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... misunderstand her. Hers was an almost childish coquetry, inevitable fruit of her intense femininity, craving ever the worship of the sterner sex and the incense of its flattery. And Samoval, after all, young, noble, handsome, with a half-sinister reputation, was something of ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... for him was almost sexless, because she had never thought, as most girls do, of love and the intrigue and coquetry of love. She was so simple as to be shameless, and at once, if he had asked her then in the street to marry him she would have said yes without hesitation or fear, or any analysis. She would like to look after him as well as herself—there were things she was sure ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... grewsome face was his) and all this time Mr. Loring was either briskly pacing the deck or reading in a sheltered nook back of the purser's cabin, but never once did he address her or intrude upon her meditations, and Pancha's spirits and courage—or was it innate coquetry?—began to ferment. That evening no less than five passengers appeared at table, though all five did not remain through the several courses. That evening Pancha was again tucked in her chair, and Cousin Inez was aided from her room and placed beside her, and very attentive ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... astonish me with your painstaking work; is it a coquetry? It does not seem labored. What I find difficult is to choose out of the thousand combinations of scenic action which can vary infinitely, the clear and striking situation which is not brutal nor forced. As for style, I attach less importance to it ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... indifference, which served only to inflame the passion it was meant to chill. The favors of the marchioness had hitherto been sought with avidity, and accepted with rapture; and the repulsive insensibility which she now experienced, roused all her pride, and called into action every refinement of coquetry. ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... and certainly a better-looking, frank, open, merry countenance was seldom to be seen. In person he was about an inch taller than I, athletic, and well formed. He made up to Mary, who, perceiving his impatience, and either to check him before me, or else from her usual feeling of coquetry, received him rather distantly, and went up to old Tom, with whom she ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... simplicity and archness. It was something like an outline of Greuze touched up by Gavarni. All her youthful attractions were cleverly set off by a toilette which, although very simple, attested in her that innate science of coquetry which all women possess from their first swaddling clothes to their bridal robe. Louise appeared besides to have made an especial study of the theory of attitudes, and assumed before Rodolphe, who examined her with the artistic eye, a number of seductive poses. ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... Venetian melody breathes so sharp a melancholy, such hopeless sadness, that it suffices in itself to reveal the secret of Tasso's grief. It lent itself, like the poet's imagination, to the world's brilliant illusions, to the smooth and false coquetry of those smiles that brought the dreadful catastrophe in their train, for which there seemed to be no compensation in this world. And yet upon the Capitol the poet was clothed with a mantle of purer and more brilliant ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... in her own high spirit, Which judged mankind at their due estimation; And for coquetry, she disdain'd to wear it: Secure of admiration, its impression Was faint, as of an ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... I said as she filled two glasses from a large wickered flask. "And what is left of this," I added. She sat on a white chair in front of a wall covered with books, a brilliant, tragic, yet smiling figure of a beautiful woman, charming in the kindly coquetry of the moment. For that is how I interpreted her mood, that she divined my diffidence with feminine quickness and sought innocently enough to help me along. And I made up my mind to take the chance, should it appear, and warn her of what we had feared. She would take it from ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... sundry little waifs from the neighborhood, and had games and romps and laughter and merry voices. Later in the week there was a dinner at which the Cranstons and some fort friends appeared; there was a mistletoe bough that night and not a little coquetry and merriment, for Wells had invited the library girls and numerous young men to be present, and the customs of Old England were reproduced with characteristic American exaggeration. That mistletoe bough remained suspended from its chandelier, ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... victims her magnetic glances, commenced by attracting them, little by little, into the blazing whirlwind which seemed to emanate from her; then, seeing them lost, suffering every torment of a tantalized craving, she amused herself by a refinement of coquetry, prolonging their delirium; then, returning to her first instincts, she destroyed them in her homicidal embrace. This was ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... trying to teach Honey that the rests are quite as important to the tempo of a waltz measure as are the notes. Honey's talent for music did not measure up to her talent for coquetry; she received about five dollars' worth of instruction and no blandishments whatever, and although she no doubt profited thereby, at last she balked and put her lazy white hands over her ears and refused to listen to Bud's inexorable ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... to the bedrooms—simpered down on him with encouraging benignity. Prim women, wearing enormously long waists, and their heads a good deal on one side, pointed their fans at him, while he washed his hands, with a coquetry irresistible, had their colours only stood, combining entreaty and command; while a jolly old boy in flowing wig, steel breast-plate, and the most convivial of noses, smiled in his face, as who should say, "Audaces ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... Dr. Leete. "There is no more pretense of a concealment of feeling on their part than on the part of their lovers. Coquetry would be as much despised in a girl as in a man. Affected coldness, which in your day rarely deceived a lover, would deceive him wholly now, for no one ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... grace of mystery to the object they drape or veil. They soften the outlines and the colours beneath them, while they permit them to peep through their meshes. They are hardly to be included in what is called high art, having more affinity with grace, refinement and coquetry, than with aesthetic ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... brunette of ordinary height, but with a beautiful figure, and pretty feet and hands, her whole person full of grace, and was indeed perfectly charming in all respects, and, besides, united with most enticing coquetry every accomplishment, danced with much grace, played on several instruments, and was full of intelligence; in fact, she had received that kind of showy education which forms the most charming mistresses and the ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Napoleon • David Widger
... answer. Silently he placed himself by her side, and together they passed the group at the office. Miss Beaubien nodded with something of her old archness and coquetry to the cap-raising party, but never hesitated. Together they passed along the narrow board walk, followed by curious eyes, and as they reached the angle and stepped beneath the shelter of the piazza in front of the long, low, green-blinded ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King |
