Indeed, their very numbers
had been her safety. Her attention had been divided and distracted by a
score of aspirants, and while in her girlish eyes some found more favor
than others, she was inclined to laughing criticism of them all. They
amused her immensely, and she puzzled them. Her almost velvety black
eyes, and the rich, varying tints of her clear brunette complexion,
suggested a nature that was not cold and unresponsive, yet many who would
gladly have won the heiress for her own sake found her as elusive as only
a woman of perfect tact and self-possession can be. She had no vulgar
ambition to count her victims who had committed themselves in words. With
her keen intuition and abundant experience she recognized the first
glance that was warmer than mere friendliness, and this was all the
committal she wished for. She loved the admiration of men, but was too
good-hearted a girl to wish to make them cynics in regard to women. She
also had the sense to know that it is a miserable triumph to lure a man
to the declaration of a supreme regard, and then in one moment change it
into contempt. While, therefore, she had refused many an offer, no one
had been humiliated, no one had been made to feel that he had been
unworthily trifled with. Thus she retained the respect and goodwill of
those to whom she might easily have become the embodiment of all that was
false and heartless. She had welcomed the comparative seclusion of the
villa on the Hudson, for, although not yet twenty, she was growing rather
weary of society and its exactions.
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