In her red mouth, with its parted lips, in the pure rose and white of her flesh, in the rich curve of her bosom, which promised already the "fine figure" of her mother, youth and summer were calling as they called in the velvet softness of the June breeze.
Innocent though she was, the powers of Life had selected her as a vehicle for their inscrutable ends.
"Where is Miss Carr?
I must speak to Miss Carr, please," she said to one of the shop girls who came up, eager to serve her.

"Will you tell her that Miss Spencer is waiting to speak to her ?" Responding to the girl's artless stare of admiration, she threw a friendly glance at her before she turned away to try on a monstrous white Leghorn hat decorated around the crown with a trellis of pink roses.

Unless she happened to be in a particularly bad humour--and this was not often the case--Florrie was imperturbably amiable.

She enjoyed flattery as a cat enjoys the firelight on its back, and while she purred happily in the pleasant warmth, she had something of the sleek and glossy look of a pretty kitten.
"How does this look on me, mother ?" she asked over her shoulder of Mrs.
Spencer, who was babbling cheerfully in her loud tones to Miss Lancaster, the forewoman.
Though some of the best blood in Virginia, profusely diluted with some of the worst, flowed comfortably in Mrs.Spencer's veins, it was impossible even for her relatives to deny that she could be at times decidedly vulgar.

Having been a conspicuous belle and beauty of a bold and dashing type in her youth, she now devoted her middle-age to the enjoyment of those pleasures which she had formerly sacrificed to the preservation of her figure and her complexion.