Excerpt from Playing the Mischief: A Novel But on second thoughts it did not seem possible that this gracious and patrician creature would beguile a mature stranger into conversation with the vulgar intent of giving him a humiliation. She must have had some serious purpose in volunteering speech, in alluring him onward with that intimate tone of gayety, and in hinting at a confidence, so that he felt encouraged to continue the dialogue and to give it a cant toward love-makin g. On the whole, he felt safer in adventuring with ladies than with women of low degree. The former were clever enough to divine him without blunt explanations, and they would know how to check him without punching his head. Of course, he said to himself of course she wants something, and I shall have to get, it for her. I wonder if it will cost me much trouble 3 he grumblingly added, for he was an indolent old public functionary, and hated to pay for even his coquetries in hard work. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.