For it is a weakness when any quality can be assailed or used.
The using of a man's weakness is not always coquetry; but it is something very like it.

Many a time the little girl, who looked up to and admired the big boy who could compel her to anything when he was so minded, would, for her own ends, work on his sense of responsibility, taking an elfin delight in his discomfiture.
The result of Stephen's harmless little coquetries was that Harold had occasionally either to thwart some little plan of daring, or else cover up its results.

In either case her confidence in him grew, so that before long he became an established fact in her life, a being in whose power and discretion and loyalty she had absolute, blind faith.

And this feeling seemed to grow with her own growth.

Indeed at one time it came to be more than an ordinary faith.