"Coquetry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... something in him; for he seemed to possess the indescribable diffidence, the early timidity that artists are bound to lose in the course of a great career, even as pretty women lose it as they make progress in the arts of coquetry. Self-distrust vanishes as triumph succeeds to triumph, and modesty is, ...
— The Unknown Masterpiece - 1845 • Honore De Balzac
... of defiant coquetry at Russell from beneath her curling lashes, then fixed her eyes upon the floor, nor raised them again. She held her reed-like body very erect and took either side of her spangled skirt in the tips of her fingers, ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... youthfulness, pain and perhaps even hunger had begun to make hollow her pallid cheeks, and if her abundant hair, in other times the delight and adornment of her person, was even yet simply and neatly arranged, though without pins or combs, it was not from coquetry but ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... you 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 cannot ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... to you, mademoiselle," said D'Artagnan, "what M. de Bragelonne said of you, at Antibes, when he already meditated death: 'If pride and coquetry have misled her, I pardon her while despising her. If love has produced her error, I pardon her, but I swear that no one could have loved her as I ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... most unpleasantly affected by the course which this affair had taken. He could no longer conceal from himself the fact that he was as much m love as a dignified Virginian could be. With him, at all events, she had shown no coquetry, nor had she ever either flattered or encouraged him. But Carrington, m his solitary struggle against fate, had found her a warm friend; always ready to assist where assistance was needed, generous with her money in any cause which he was willing to vouch for, ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... was bad luck, the worst of luck. Mr. Yonowsky's public spirit died within his breast; Leah's coquetry vanished before a future unrelieved by visits from the black and friendly ambulance, and when Aaron climbed the well-known stairs that evening he heard, while he was yet two floors short of his destination, the shrieks of the twins, the smashing of crockery, and the grumbling of the neighbours. ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... she said, simply, frankly and with no touch of a coquetry that had been harshly at discord ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... girl home he had nothing to do but apply for it. He felt that it would hardly be the "square thing" to put Laurette to the embarrassment of inviting him right there before all the hands. Before he could catch her eye, however, Laurette had spoken what surely the devil of coquetry must have whispered in her ear. Undoubtedly, she had promised Jim Reddin that he should drive her home. But "let him show that he appreciates the favor," she thought to herself; and aloud, with a toss of her head, she exclaimed, "I'll take ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... burning blushes that covered her countenance. The manner in which the plans of Barnstable had become known to his foe was no longer a mystery. Her conscience also reproached her a little with some unnecessary coquetry, as she remembered that quite one-half of the dialogue between her lover and herself, under the shadow of that very wall to which Borroughcliffe alluded, had been on a subject altogether foreign to contention and tumults. As the feelings of Barnstable were by no means so ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... softly went into the house; her innocent coquetry more than sufficiently punished already. And we three looked at one another with blank faces, It was clear that we had made a dangerous enemy, and an enemy at our own gates. As the Vidame had said, these ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... trappers. Some of their yarns are pretty tightly strained, but most of them contain a capital hit and are usually founded on the facts. It is a well authenticated fact that the beaver has but one mate; and, that they live together a loving couple, as if husband and wife. As to their liaisons, coquetry, flirting and so forth, doubtless the society in some parts of the human family will bear a faithful resemblance in these respects also. As an example of industry the world will look in vain for a better one than is afforded by the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... may be able to keep a cook, may be finely educated, may possess the sentiment of coquetry, may have the right to pass whole hours in her boudoir lying on a sofa, and may live a life of soul, she must have at least six thousand francs a year if she lives in the country, and twenty thousand if she lives at Paris. These two financial limits will suggest to you how many honest women ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... of the literary character retains its enjoyments, and usually its powers—a happiness which accompanies no other. The old age of coquetry witnesses its own extinct beauty; that of the "used" idler is left without a sensation; that of the grasping Croesus exists only to envy his heir; and that of the Machiavel who has no longer a voice in the cabinet, is but an unhappy ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... furniture was removed or broken. Some rustic cottages dotted the lawn, but these were now inhabited by officers and their servants. A few days were to finish the work of rapine, and a heap of ashes was to mark the scene of tournament, coquetry, and betrothal. I witnessed a review of troops in a field contiguous, at nine o'clock. The heat was so intense that many men fell out of line and were carried off to their camps. McDowell passed exactingly from ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... those to whom the law of the completion of man through the good is indeed foolish and chimerical, since their lives imply the negation of it: I mean to say the immense multitude of those who live in any kind of way, good easy people, refined possibly, from caprice, coquetry or laziness, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... city permitted. The hair of the men was often a mass of effeminate curls, their chins were always shaven, and many of them had flushed or coloured cheeks. Many of the women were very pretty, and all were dressed with elaborate coquetry. As they swept by beneath, he saw ecstatic faces with ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... tumultuous glow of gratified vanity and dawning love, Gerald Grantham had executed a toilet into which, with a view to the improvement of the advantage he imagined himself to have gained, all the justifiable coquetry of personal embellishment had been thrown; but neither the handsome blue uniform with its glittering epaulette, nor the beautiful hair on which more than usual pains had been bestowed, nor the sparkling of his dark eye, nor the expression of a cheek, rendered doubly animated by excitement, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... perversely forgetting the order in which she had given her dances. The girl was so undeniably happy that Judith dreaded the grim news she must tell her. Eudora blushed as she encountered Judith's eye. Her half-sister ever offered a check on Eudora's exuberant coquetry, with its precipitation of discussions that often ended in bullets. Leander stood on the outermost fringe of Eudora's potential partners. He would not have dared to maintain it openly, yet he was sure the pretty minx had promised that ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... snarl, "I mistrust that maidenly reserve which men call pride, and I, clever coquetry. The women of Rome have realised, fortunately by now, that they are the slaves of their masters, to be bought and sold as he directs. The wife must learn that she is the slave of her husband, the daughter that she belongs ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... derived much pleasure, since my arrival at the Hall, from observing the fair Julia and her lover. She has all the delightful, blushing consciousness of an artless girl, inexperienced in coquetry, who has made her first conquest; while the captain regards her with that mixture of fondness and exultation with which a youthful lover is apt to contemplate so beauteous ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... into them. But for the present she remained 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 very cold ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... me from that motive; I wished to cultivate their good opinion, and meantime leave them the hope of success by seeming less on my guard than I really was. My conduct in this particular resembled the coquetry of some very honest women, who, to obtain their wishes, without permitting or promising anything, sometimes encourage hopes they never ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... known how much she has always disliked me for marrying Mr. Vernon, and that we had never met before, I should have imagined her an attached friend. One is apt, I believe, to connect assurance of manner with coquetry, and to expect that an impudent address will naturally attend an impudent mind; at least I was myself prepared for an improper degree of confidence in Lady Susan; but her countenance is absolutely ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... first glimmer 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
... felt like lashing herself for having felt like that and for having replied, in a spirit of pure coquetry, in a voice of studied, cool, ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... appeared to be painful to Seffy, but not to Sally. She frankly accepted the situation and promptly put into action its opportunities for coquetry. She begged him, first, with consummate aplomb, to aid her in adjusting her parcels more securely, insisting upon carrying them herself, and it would be impossible to describe adequately her allures. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... the dilemma; she had not written either out of coquetry or because she did not really care for him. If the former were the true reason, she was cruel; if the latter, she ought to tell him so at once, and he would try to master himself. On no hypothesis was she justified ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... 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
... toilet with feminine coquetry, put on a white waistcoat, which suited him better with the coat, 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 ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... window of the house. The niece soon recognised me as the person whose dress and appearance I had so minutely described, one moment showing herself at the window, at another darting away with all the coquetry of her sex. I perceived that she was flattered with her conquest; and, after parading myself for ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... tyrannous yoke. She felt not the slightest remorse for the hard life which he should lead. At a bound she reached cold, calculating indifference—for her daughter's sake. She had gained a sudden insight into the treacherous, lying arts of degraded women; the wiles of coquetry, the revolting cunning which arouses such profound hatred in men at the mere suspicion of innate corruption ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... natural, purposeless manner! But the same end was always kept steadily in view. What I have witnessed this morning convinces me of your aims. Your movements were so skilfully managed that they scarcely seemed open to suspicion. The most specious coquetry has governed all your actions. You were always attired more simply than any one else; but by this very simplicity you thought to render yourself remarkable, and attract a larger share of attention. You always pretended to ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... his—a spice of coquetry in their questioning gleam. But the cloud lingered upon ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... came over her bright, expressive face, while she glanced anxiously at Paquita; then, bending towards me, she whispered, "Ah, my friend, he is implacable! I am so sorry, for Paquita's sake." And then, with a smile of irrepressible coquetry, she added, "And ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... of His Ideal. It is an extraordinary work, drunken with heroism, colossal, half barbaric, trivial, and sublime. An Homeric hero struggles among the sneers of a stupid crowd, a herd of brawling and hobbling ninnies. A violin solo, in a sort of concerto, describes the seductions, the coquetry, and the degraded wickedness of woman. Then strident trumpet-blasts sound the attack; and it is beyond me to give an idea of the terrible charge of cavalry that follows, which makes the earth tremble and our hearts leap; nor can I describe how an iron determination leads to the ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... straight to a counter where lace scarfs and fichus and wonderful boudoir caps were achieving a brilliant success. Instantly a fairy-like brunette with cherry lips and a bewitching, turned-up nose came forward with a sweet meekness that was the subtlest kind of coquetry. Whatever he had to say was said in a second or two, and the girl answered as quickly. But she went back to work with a conscious look which would to any watching woman announce that she considered the ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... 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 blue ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... as he was so much older, that she, although always winsome and earnest, showed nothing of the tormenting, bewildering coquetry of her nature. Colonel Zane prided himself on his discernment, and he had already observed that Helen had different sides of character for different persons. To Betty, Mabel, Nell, and the children, she was frank, girlish, full of fun and always lovable; to her ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... presented an attractive blending of 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 ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... or else no more than an assumption, an invention of the imaginative La Fosse. Far, indeed, from it, I found no arrogance or coldness in her. All unversed in the artifices of her sex, all unacquainted with the wiles of coquetry, she was the very incarnation of naturalness and maidenly simplicity. To the tales that—with many expurgations—I told her of Court life, to the pictures that I drew of Paris, the Luxembourg, the Louvre, the Palais Cardinal, and the courtiers that ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... let me send my coach for you? Mr. Soame Jenyns has been dying with impatience; some of us thought you would not come; others thought it only coquetry; but come, let us repair the time as we can, and introduce you to ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... draught of milk from her hands to allay his thirst, or a bunch of roses from her little flower plot to adorn his waistcoat, Elinor answered his demands with secret mistrust and terror; although, with the coquetry so natural to her sex, she could not hate him for the amiable weakness of regarding ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... work about the house was done, Marius entered softly the room where Varia lay, tended by Nerissa. The old woman slipped away, and Varia held out a slim hand to him in one of her sudden and unaccountable moods of coquetry. He kissed ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... life, had seen to that. And so she had been thrown upon her own resources, with the excellent result that she had grown up with a mind untainted by any worldly thought. And now, when this man came to her with his version of the old, old story, she knew no coquetry, knew how to exercise no coyness or other blandishment. She made no pretense of any sort. She loved him, so what else was there to do but ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... curtain ascends to a dreamy melody of the piano, and discovers Sylla, attired as the smartest of soubrettes, in close juxtaposition to Lionel Beauchamp in a groom's livery. Taking a letter from him, she places it in her bosom, and then looks up at him with all the devilry of coquetry in her eyes. She toys with the corner of her apron, twiddling it backwards and forwards between her fingers. She glances demurely down at her feet, then looks shyly up at him again; then once more studying her apron, she, as if unconsciously, proffers her cheek in a manner too provocative for any ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... does that? You are clearly determined to drive the poor fellow out of his mind with your infernal coquetry. Well, women are the most troublesome, and I believe in many cases, the wickedest creatures on the face ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... most charming coquetry I have ever seen!' said all the ladies round. And they all took to holding water in their mouths that they might gurgle whenever anyone spoke to them. Then they thought themselves nightingales. Yes, the lackeys and chambermaids announced that ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... entirely her beauty which had enchanted him, though, like all Frenchmen, he was a passionate worshipper of the beautiful. The sweet soul in her eyes had touched his heart. Her ignorance had done more to strengthen it than anything she could have done. There was not a spark of coquetry in her whole nature. She listened to his poetic speeches, wondering but believing—wondering how they could be true of her, yet trusting him and all the world too seriously to accuse ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the last of a school that nursed but the single aim of subjugating man. To-night, at seventy-something, she is a bit of pink bisque fragility, bubbling tirelessly with reminiscence, her vivacity unimpaired, her energy amazing, and her coquetry faultless. From which we should learn, and be grateful therefor, that when a girl is brought up in the way she ought to go she will never be able ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... added, somewhat reluctant that of the entire group only one should be left to the wiles of her unconsciously intentional coquetry; "there is plenty of room in here ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... inspired him with a joyous credulity. It wooed him with its large and welcoming light, its four walls were golden white and warm, and in all its details he had found unmistakable evidences of design. There was an overruling coquetry in the decorative effects, in the minute little arrangements for his comfort. A finer hand than any housemaid's must have heaped that blue china bowl with roses, laid out that writing-table, and chosen the books in the shelf ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... Fletcher gave him, and the delight he found in her after conduct, Jack discovered how much he loved her. In the shame, gratitude, and half sweet, half bitter emotion that filled her heart, Kitty felt that to her Jack would never be "only cousin Jack" any more. All the vanity, coquetry, selfishness, and ill-temper of the day seemed magnified to heinous sins, for now her only thought was, "seeing these faults, he can't care for me. Oh, I wish I was ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... 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 her ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... 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
... attacking some town in the wars of the Fronde. The breach was scarcely practicable, and the best of the besieging army had recoiled from it with great loss. The Black Mousquetaires stood by in all the coquetry of scarf, and plume, and fringed scented gloves, laughing louder at each repulse of the Linesmen. The soldiers heard them and gnashed their teeth. At last there was a murmur, and then a shout—'En avant les Gants Glaces!' They wanted to see 'the swells' beaten too. Then ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... present admiration was pretty plain; 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 ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... eminent degree, the timid doubts and fears of a young girl were things he could not recognize. He had no point in his own nature with which they came in contact, so that he should sympathize with them. He knew the whole fence and foil of coquetry, the signs of silent flattery, the sweet language of womanly self-conscious love, whether wooing or being won; but the fluttering misgivings of youth and absolute inexperience were dark to him. All of which he felt ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... that her woman's heart must have told her ere this how dear she was to him, and it was no egotism or conceit that prompted him to the belief that she would not show such pleasure in his coming if he were utterly indifferent to her. Coquetry was something Nellie Bayard seemed deficient in; she was frank and truthful ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... somewhat engaged with one another, but almost equally so with the world around them. They think it well to vary existence with plenty of coquetry and display. First, the graceful reverence to one another, then to their neighbors. Exhibit your grace in the chasse,—made apparently solely for the purpose of dechasseing;—then civil intimacy between the ladies, in la chaine, then a decorous promenade of partners, then ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... banquets, and, since the women were present in quite the same capacity as the performers who were hired to appear later on the stage, they did not allow the moments to drag. A bohemian spirit prevailed; the ardor of the men, lashed on by laughter, coquetry, and smiles, rose quickly; wine flowed, and a general intimacy began. Introductions were no longer necessary, the talk flew back and forth along the rim of the rose- ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... it disturbed Hanson more than he would have dreamed to notice the change in voice and manner. The warm, provocative, inherent coquetry was gone from both smile and eyes; instead of a soft, alluring girl ready to play with him a baffling, blood-stirring game of flirtation, she was again the sphynx of last night, whose unrevealing eyes seemed to have looked out over the desert for ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... that was necessary. And still so kind, so gentle with him! No scorn, no offended dignity, no displeasure even. She, who could punish insolence with anybody, was never hard upon the humble admirer—only too soft, in fact, with all her basic firmness, and incapable of the hard-hearted coquetry that so commonly makes beauty vile. "Face of waxen angel, with paw of desert beast"—that was ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... backwards and forwards, reflecting on the events of the past few hours. I could, of course, see that for some reason or other Diane had apparently broken with De Ganache. It was not a trick of heartless coquetry—for that I gave her credit. Yet the change had been so swift and sudden that it was difficult to assign any other reason for it. So far as I was concerned I was sure my affair was utterly hopeless; but the air of the Italian campaign ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... well; neither the philosopher whom he had provoked, nor the fine lady whom he had reproved, left him as an enemy. His nature with its varied riches had quite enough feminine coquetry to regain betimes the sympathy which he was on the eve of losing. A gracious word, an affectionate clasp of the ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... promised to have power by your charms, renewing those she had never forgotten in her lost Iza. No one consulted the Almanack de Gotha when you were launched on an admiring society as one of the Vieradlers. You soon won a great reputation for freshness of wit and coquetry in all South Germany. In plain words, you could not see a man come into the drawing-room without wishing to make him fall in love with you. We want to monopolize genius—you to monopolize the love of man. You have the mania of loving, more common ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... more surely an inheritance from the maid-mother of the sinless garden than her way of showing that she gives her all, Winsome laid her either hand on her lover's shoulders and drew his face down to hers—laying her lips to his of her own free will and accord, without shame in giving, or coquetry of refusal, in that full kiss of first surrender which a woman may give once, but never ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... looked up at him, the colour rising to her beautiful brow and giving a youthful radiance to her nunlike face. "It could certainly go upon a younger man, Mr. Ambler," she rejoined, with a touch of the coquetry for which she had once been noted; "but I should like to know where ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... notion of what constitutes womanly charm. It is not unlikely, however, that like Leonarda she is meant to anticipate a new type of womanhood, co-ordinate and coequal with man, whose charm shall be of a wholly different order. The coquetry, the sweet hypocrisy, nay, all the frivolous arts which exercise such a potent sway over the heart of man have their roots in the prehistoric capture and thraldom; and from the point of view of the woman suffragists, are so ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... not 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 ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... 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
... creature tap Davidge's elbow and smile, putting out her hand with coquetry. She saw her debarrass herself of her companion, a French officer whose exquisite horizon-blue uniform was amazingly crossed with the wound and service chevrons of three years' warfaring. Nevertheless, ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... meet the handsomest and the wittiest women in Paris. May I not suppose that some one of those mermaids has deigned to clasp you in her cold and scaly arms, and that she has inspired the answer whose prosaic opinions sadden me? There is something in life more beautiful than the garlands of Parisian coquetry; there grows a flower far up those Alpine peaks called men of genius, the glory of humanity, which they fertilize with the dews their lofty heads draw from the skies. I seek to cultivate that flower and make it bloom; for its wild yet ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... not to blame. There was no false play on either side; he is as much above the meanness of coquetry, as—I must say it—as I am. His thoughts were all along taken up with you, even while he talked, and laughed, and quarrelled with me. While I, so strong in the belief that worlds could not shake ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... out his reply through his teeth. "God has given you women a plentiful supply of coquetry to start with, and on the top of that you have the milliner and the jeweller to help you; but do not think we ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... through her mind was utterly foreign to any coquetry. Vere had no more feeling of sex in regard to Ruffo than she would have had if she had been a boy herself. The sympathy she felt with him was otherwise founded, deep down in mysteries beyond the ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... absolute proprietor of his wife In Rome justice and religion always rank second to politics Kings only desire to be obeyed when they command Laws will only be as so many black lines on white paper Love-affair between Mademoiselle de la Valliere and the King Madame de Montespan had died of an attack of coquetry Not show it off was as if one only possessed a kennel That Which Often It is Best to Ignore Violent passion had changed to mere friendship When women rule their reign is always stormy and troublous Wife: property or of furniture, useful ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Court Memoirs of France • David Widger
... ascending from seaward in a gradual coquetry of foot-hills, broad low ranges, cross-systems, canyons, little flats, and gentle ravines, inland dropped off almost sheer to the river below. And from under your very feet rose range after range, tier after tier, rank after rank, ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... "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 in one ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... the wilds of America, and so sweet were their attentions to my chafed spirit. With them is my trusty Philip, whose trials are now over, while he basks in the favor of the Earl and the smiles of the pretty Prudence, his wife, undisturbed save by her occasional coquetry, which only serves, I suppose, to make his love ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... pleading glance of Carroll, and though her bright face and unblemished toilet showed the inefficiency of her excuse, it was evident that her wish to be alone was genuine and without coquetry. They could only lift their hats and ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... it, you little mischief? thought I. As if that were not the very refinement of coquetry! But I prudently refrained from saying it, for a tempest of hot tears began to fall, and she sobbed, "Oh, Madame Fleming, I did not think I was going to forfeit your good opinion. What can I do? I can't help ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... attained the object of her wishes. She had finally reached it by bribery and intrigue, by hypocritical tenderness, by the resignation of her maiden modesty and womanly honor, and by all the arts of coquetry. ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... indicated with a finger the place where he might repose. It was at a three yards' distance. Then they talked as they were wont to, with much coquetry on Alice's side, and on Keene's always humble submissiveness tempered with glances and sighs. They drank tea, and Keene used the opportunity of putting down his cup to take a ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... mouth relaxed but she did not shift her gaze. "You forget. It was not planned—by me." On rare occasions Mary Louise could slip from her matter-of-fact self into coquetry and back again before one realized. It was like the play of a lightning shuttle, so quick that one rarely caught the flash of the back stroke. Joe had erred before. He was ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... 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. But it was ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... love, the love that poets sang, and privileged and tortured beings lived and died of, that love had its own superior expressiveness, and the sure command of its means. The petty arts of coquetry were no farther from it than the numbness of the untaught girl. Great love was wise, strong, powerful, like genius, like any other dominant form of human power. It knew itself, and what it wanted, and how to attain ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... elegant was already formed; She possessed several talents in perfection, particularly those of Music and drawing: Her character was gay, open, and good-humoured; and the graceful simplicity of her dress and manners formed an advantageous contrast to the art and studied Coquetry of the Parisian Dames, whom I had just quitted. From the moment that I beheld her, I felt the most lively interest in her fate. I made many enquiries respecting ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... conversation; but it is a fact capable of an amiable interpretation that ladies are not the worst disposed toward a new acquaintance of their own sex because she has points of inferiority. And Maggie was so entirely without those pretty airs of coquetry which have the traditional reputation of driving gentlemen to despair that she won some feminine pity for being so ineffective in spite of her beauty. She had not had many advantages, poor thing! and it must be admitted there was no pretension ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... which, according to the taste of these barbarians, adds to its value. The women use it for greasing their hair: without this they would think something deficient in their dress. One cannot believe to what excess they carry their coquetry. They dress their hair with great art. They keep it flowing in tresses upon their breasts, and fasten to it any thing they can find. I have seen some of them ornament it with shell-work, keys of chests, and padlocks, ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... sex - and all the weakest of that dear miscellany, nourishing, cherishing next her soft heart, voicelessly flattering, hopes that she would have died sooner than have acknowledged. She tore off her nightcap, and her hair fell about her shoulders in profusion. Undying coquetry awoke. By the faint light of her nocturnal rush, she stood before the looking-glass, carried her shapely arms above her head, and gathered up the treasures of her tresses. She was never backward to admire herself; that ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Guizot, when a distinguished American lady asked him what was the marvel of her fascination, replied, with great emotion, "Sympathy, sympathy, sympathy." She had none of that aridity of heart which regular coquetry either presupposes or produces. Deprived by destiny of those relations which usually fill the heart of woman, she carried into the only sentiment allowed her, an ardor, a faithfullness, and a delicacy, which were unequalled; and the veracity ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... burn in his. In the twilight it seemed to him that her very dress had a warmer rustle and glimmer, that there emanated from her glance and movements some heady fragrance of a long-past summer. He smiled to think that this phantom coquetry should have risen at the summons of an academic degree; but some deeper sense in him was stirred as by a vision of waste riches adrift on the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... 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 to have its effect upon his soul ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... smile held up his hand, so plainly interposing 'not for better taste', that Bella's colour deepened over the little piece of coquetry ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... appearance of a handsome stranger on the opposite side, dropped their garments (I should say garment, to be quite-correct) over their limbs, which their occupation exposed somewhat too freely, and, with a shrill exclamation of 'Eh, sirs!' uttered with an accent between modesty and coquetry, sprang off ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... among us—Heaven help us!—who can swear whether her charm is Love's own permanent food or just Nature's temporary bait! At twenty, I tell you, there's not one man among us who can prove whether vivacity is temperament or just plain kiddishness; whether sweetness is real disposition or just coquetry; whether tenderness is personal discrimination or just sex; whether dumbness is stupidity or just brain hoarding its immature treasure; whether indeed coldness is prudery or just conscious passion banking its fires! The dear daredevil sweetheart whom ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... you will," answered Cherry, as much from real nervous fear as from the coquetry which made such companionship pleasant. "But I would fain go back a few paces for my poor reeds, that I go not home empty handed. And you must catch your steed, Sir Knight; he seems disposed to wander ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... of Elizabeth never triumphed so much in any contrivances as in those which were conjoined with her coquetry; and as her character in this particular was generally known, the court of France thought that they might, without danger of forming any final conclusion, venture the further in their concessions and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... three men with whom she was now genially exchanging light nothings come to the hospital—like thousands of others—streaming with blood, helpless, whimpering with pain. And something of the joy of the hen whose brood has safely hatched warmed her coquetry. ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... huts appeared; no robe, pale blue or white, fluttered among the shadows; no dog blinked in the golden patches of the sun—only the sound of the flute came to us from some hidden place ceaselessly, wild and romantic, full of an odd coquetry, and of an absurdity that was both uncivilised ...
— Smain; and Safti's Summer Day - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... tantalizing coquetry in Zany's manner now. In a moment she was in Chunk's arms sobbing, "Tek me way off fum dis place. I go wid you now, dis berry minute, en I neber breve easy till we way, way off enywhar, I doan keer whar. Oh, Chunk, you doan know w'at been ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... Fanshawe was beginning to disclose the causes of her prostrate condition. There had been a retrenchment of incense, a diversion or a total withholding of homage and attention coquetry had failed of effect, vanity had undergone mortification. She lay fuming ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... not helpless. But she turned, and with a spice of coquetry said, "Still I think you ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... had waylaid her in conservatories and in back drawing-rooms, in lobbies while she waited for her carriage—had looked at her piteously with tenderest declarations trembling on their lips; but she had contrived to keep them at bay, to strike them dumb by her coldness, or confound them by her coquetry; for all these were ineligibles, whom Lady Lesbia Haselden did not want to ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... attending one is eligible. The card of membership only costs 3 marks for a single member and 4 marks for a whole family. Some of the excursions are planned to include brother pilgrims, and their character is gay and cheerful, without flirting or coquetry, a genuine friendly intercourse between girls and boys, young men and maidens, a pure and beautiful companionship such as no dancing lesson and no ballroom can create, and which is nevertheless the best training for life." So nowadays gangs of girls, and even mixed gangs of boys and girls, ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... gilliflowers, and Audrey gathered up her apron and filled it with the vivid blooms. The child that had thus brought loaves of bread to a governor's table spread beneath a sugar-tree, with mountains round about, had been no purer of heart, no more innocent of rustic coquetry. When her apron was filled she would have returned to the house, but Haward would not have it so. "They will call when dinner is ready," he said. "I wish to talk to you, little maid. Let us go sit in the shade of ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... conjure up before me as I mounted the stairs the exact expression of her face as I had last seen it bending from the window at Rosny; to the end that I might have some guide for my future conduct, and might be less likely to fall into the snare of a young girl's coquetry. But I could come now, as then, to no satisfactory or safe conclusion, and only felt anew the vexation I had experienced on losing the velvet knot, which she had given me on ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... history, for Madame Recamier was altogether as anomalous as any creation of French fiction. Her marriage was such only in name; she lived pure, and with unblemished repute, in the most vicious and scandalous times; she inspired friendship by coquetry; her heart was never touched, though full of womanly tenderness; a leader of society and of fashion, she never ceased to be timid and diffident; she ruled witty and intellectual circles by the charm of the most unepigrammatic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... his letter. He read it through to the end, and Faversham listened to the end. It told its own story. It was the letter of a girl who wrote in a frank impulse of admiration to a man whom she did not know. There was nowhere a trace of coquetry, nowhere the expression of a single sentimentality. Its tone was pure friendliness, it was the work of a quite innocent girl who because she knew the man to whom she wrote to be brave, therefore believed him to be honourable. She expressed her trust in the very ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... blood suffused his face darkly, his arms leapt out to enfold her. She stepped back, evading him with a movement of coquetry that served, as it was intended, ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... waistcoat, the vast cravat engulfing the chin, the gaiters, the metal buttons on the greenish coat,—all these reminiscences of Imperial fashions were blended with a sort of afterwaft and lingering perfume of the coquetry of the Incroyable—with an indescribable finical something in the folds of the garments, a certain air of stiffness and correctness in the demeanor that smacked of the school of David, that recalled Jacob's ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... farm, and Germain put him to bed undisturbed. Then he began upon all sorts of explanations, Father Maurice, seated on a three-legged stool before the door, listened with gravity; and, although he was ill-content with the result of the journey, when Germain told him about the widow's systematic coquetry, and demanded of his father-in-law whether he had the time to go and pay his court fifty-two Sundays in the year at the risk of being dismissed in the end, the old man nodded his head in assent and answered: ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... her original type and name. Miss Jim was evidently a victim of one of Nature's most economical moods; she was spare and angular, with a long, wrinkled face surmounted by a scant fluff of pale, frizzled hair. Her mouth slanted upward at one corner, giving her an expression unjustly attributed to coquetry, when in reality it was due to an innocent and pardonable pride in ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... shyly from the shadows of the house into the glowing sunset and spring weather of our landing, I stopped, amazed, in the gravelled walk of our garden, because of the incredible beauty of the maid, now first revealed in bloom, and because of her modesty, which was yet slyly aglint with coquetry, and because of the tender gravity of her years, disclosed in the first poignant search of the soul I had brought back from my long journeying. I thought, I recall, at the moment of our meeting, that laboring in a mood of highest exaltation God had of the ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... ladies: Vesta, the elder by two or three years, and richly endowed with the lights of both beauty and accomplishments; the maid from the ocean side, plainer, and with no ornament within or without; but he could foresee, under Vesta's fostering, a graceful woman, with coquetry and fascination not wholly latent there; and, as his eyes met Rhoda's, he interpreted the look that at a certain time of life almost every maiden casts on meeting a young man—"Is he single?" She shot this look so archly, yet so strong, that the arrow wounded him a very little ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... me," she said with a pitiful attempt at faded coquetry. "I don't blame you, Mr. Tutt. You don't look a day older yourself. But a great ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... neck, and said it with all 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 ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... talent for salesmanship. Nor can we, using the method of the chemist, apply the litmus to his stream of consciousness and get his psychical reaction in a demonstrable way. We are glad we cannot, else humanity might lose the fine arts of coquetry and conquest. Perhaps we never shall be able to do these things, but that is small cause for discouragement. What we do claim for the science of character analysis is that it is classified knowledge based upon sound principles; that it is as accurate as the science of medicine; ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... dwell. Madame, a brown geometric Lady, age now forty-two, with a Great Man who has scandalously ceased to love her, casts her eye upon St. Lambert: 'Yes, you would be the shoeing-horn, Monsieur, if one had time, you fine florid fellow, hardly yet into your thirties—' And tries him with a little coquetry; I always think, perhaps in this view chiefly? And then, at any rate, as he responded, the thing itself became so interesting: 'Our Ulysses-bow, we can still bend it, then, aha! 'And is not that a pretty stag withal, worth bringing down; florid, just entering his thirties, and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... strange garret, roamed the Tiffany home and entertained her who would listen. He warmed to Kate especially, and that household fairy, in her flights between errands of mercy, played him with all the prettiness of her coquetry. At luncheon he quite lost his embarrassment and responded to the advances of three friendly humans. Yes ma-am, he had been glad to learn that Bertram was doing well in the city. He had five sons, all doing well. He'd risked letting Bert try college, and it had turned out all right. There ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... favourable eyes, and I went, after seeing her 'Rosiere de Salency,' with the most favourable disposition, but I could not like her.... And from time to time I saw, or thought I saw, through the gloom of her countenance a gleam of coquetry. But my father judges of her much more favourably than I do. She evidently took pains to please him, and he says he is sure she is a person over whose mind he could ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... spoiling. I ran about in all weathers, I came back at all hours, I went to the pit of every theatre. No one paid me any attention, or suspected my disguise. Besides that, I wore it with ease; the entire want of coquetry in my costume and physiognomy disarmed all suspicion. I was too ill-dressed, and my manner was too simple, to attract or fix attention. Women know little how to disguise themselves, even upon the stage. They are unwilling to sacrifice the slenderness of their waists, the smallness of their feet, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... whom contact with others weakens. The less he has to address and to consider others, friends or enemies, the more truly he utters his deepest soul. Intercourse with particular people always causes little scruples in him, intentional amenities, coquetry, reticences, reserves, spiteful hits, evasions. Therefore it should not be thought that we get to know him to the core from his letters. Natures like his, which all contact with men unsettles, give their best and ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... not to be daunted. Doggedly he fought his way around and through the swampy underbrush and presently stood blinking his delighted eyes in a little natural clearing that was a glorious climax to all the tantalizing coquetry of the creek. Encircled by drooping, long-leaved willows that were themselves enringed by stately trees, lay a broad, deep pool, clear as crystal, one side carpeted with velvety turf and screened with leafy draperies, and the whole canopied by the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... man who imagined himself to be a woman. He was handsome, but not feminine in appearance. He adored a little mirror, with which he was gratified. Rags of all colours were his delight; and he had made a precious collection. His coquetry was evident; and he answered pertinently all questions, never belying at the same time his fixed opinion, that he was endowed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 546, May 12, 1832 • Various
... spreading trees, some of them probably a hundred years old. There was but an imperfect pavement, the stepping-stones of which were adapted to display the Parisian female ankle and boot in all their calculated coquetry; and the road showed nothing but mother earth, in the middle of which a dirty gutter served to convey the impurities of the city to the river. The people in the streets appeared sulky and stupefied: here and there I noticed groups of the higher ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... to judge Mr. Uncannon too harshly. In fact I am not in a very judicial frame of mind. But, whatever his intent, his ministerial coquetry has injured the cause of Christ in Wheathedge more than a year of preaching can benefit it in North Bizzy. Meanwhile, the parsonage, which we hired, lies vacant on our hands, ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... 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
... their ridicule of her. She was "green," he could not deny that, yet not in the sense the Toomeys meant. Naive, ingenuous, he felt were better words. She knew nothing of social usages, and she was without a suspicion of the coquetry that he looked for in girls before they had begun to do up their hair. She spoke with startling frankness upon subjects which he had been taught were taboo. He admired and was accustomed to soft, helpless, clinging femininity, ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... 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 "un ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... chains of real love. They know that nothing is less common than sacrifice among them. And consider how much a worldly woman must sacrifice when she is in love—liberty, quietness, the charming play of a free mind, coquetry, amusement, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Of late months she has been subject to moodiness, emotional variability, which has somewhat ruffled the smooth surface of our companionship. But to-day there has been no trace of "temperament." She has shown herself the pleasant, witty Judith she knows I like her to be, with a touch of coquetry thrown in on her own account. She even spoke amiably of Carlotta. I have not had so thoroughly enjoyable a day with Judith for ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... done. It ain't the square thing to Five Forks." And then the "Fool" would rush away to the valley, and be received by Miss Milly with a certain reserve of manner that finally disappeared in a flush of color, some increased vivacity, and a pardonable coquetry. And so the days passed. Miss Milly grew better in health, and more troubled in mind; and Mr. Hawkins became more and more embarrassed; and Five Forks smiled, and rubbed its hands, and waited for the approaching denoument. And then it ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... the purpose of procreation, after which the partners separate and cease to care for one another. Polygamy is frequent, polyandry also occurs, and there are many cases of absolute profligate promiscuity. We shall, indeed, find the suggestion of all the sexual sins of humanity, every form of coquetry, of love-battles, jealousy and the like. There are as well many examples of monogamic unions lasting for the lives of the partners. This is especially the case with birds. Among the higher mammals polygamy is most common, but ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... if thinking. "Do you want me to call him in?" she said quietly, but without the least trace of archness or coquetry. "Would you rather he were here—or shall we go out now and meet him? I'll say you just came as ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... yet, just for amusement, she displayed towards him all the arts and graces of coquetry ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... "With a coquetry I never saw executed more prettily, 'I know,' said she, 'that you are dying for a kiss, and you're ashamed to ask for it. You may take one.' . . . And so in triumph, and singing poems to all blue eyes, I said ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... again around Paris, watched afar by the police, after the fashion of cockchafers, made by cruel children to fly at the end of a string. He became one of those fugitive and timid beings whom the law, with a sort of coquetry, arrests and releases by turn—something like those platonic fishers who, in order that they may not exhaust their fish-pond, throw immediately back in the water the fish which has just come out of the net. Without a suspicion on his part that so much honor had been done to so ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... opposite sex called, she at once grew 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 a long dress—a dress which ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... strange unrest came into her face and manner; the dark eyes seemed to be always looking for something they could not find. Her mind, though charming and fascinating as ever, grew variable and unsteady. She had always been too proud for coquetry; she remained so now. But she no longer shunned and avoided all flattery and homage; it seemed rather to please her than not. And—greatest change of all—the name of Lord Arleigh never crossed her lips. He himself had retired from public life; the great hopes formed of him were all dying away. ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... giggle. There was a queer mixture of girlish coquetry and masculine strength about her that was disconcerting. Elizabeth paused, afraid to ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... throne of intellect. The exorcised image of Klaartje van den Ende—raised again by the landlady's words—hovered amid the demonstrations. He caught gleams of her between the steps. Her perfect Greek face flashed up and vanished as in coquetry, her smile flickered. How learned she was, how wise, how witty, how beautiful! And the instant he allowed himself to muse thus, she appeared in full fascination, skating superbly on the frozen canals, or smiling down at him from the ancient balustrade of the window ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... youth, coquetry is natural. It is the expression of amiable indecision. At thirty, ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... among his treasures. He never had seen a woman who had suggested ever so faintly the thought that he should like to place it on her finger. There had been women, of a kind—"Peroxide Louise," in Meadows, with her bovine coquetry and loud-mouthed vivacity, yapping scandal up and down the town, the transplanted product of a city's slums, not even loyal to the man who had tried to raise ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... leaving France struck a chill to her heart. A funereal gloom settled over the room. Additional dismay overwhelmed her as D'Argenton wound up with a vigorous tirade against French women,—their lightness and coquetry, the insincerity of their smiles, and the venality of ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet |
