"Of course, the women insisted that her golden hair was dyed, and her eyebrows painted. Such a play of colors did not exist in Nature. But the men did not find it the less charming on that account.
"An old Englishman was the first who ventured to address her, as a countrywoman of his. She replied in the best of English, but so shortly, that this unsuccessful attempt frightened away all others of the same kind.
"However, she herself soon appeared to tire of the isolation which she had maintained for the first few days. She made advances to a Mecklenburg lady, who had accompanied her sick daughter to the seashore, and, under the pretext of sympathy, she struck up an acquaintance with her which she let drop again after a short time, evidently because it bored her. As she also spoke German, though with an English accent, several country noblemen from the Mark, who had fallen dead in love with her, ventured to speak to her. She treated them with cool condescension, and it was not long before a regular court had gathered about her, in which several young people with whom I had heretofore associated allowed themselves to be enrolled.
"They told me about the moods and whims of their lady, who was made up of ice and fire; of childish innocence and the most refined coquetry; of sentiment and wild audacity.
"The English coldness, and the soft, dove-like smile, with which she appeared in society, and the half-bored and half-ironical manner in which she accepted the homage of her admirers, were merely a mask. When she was alone with a person, an entirely different and much more adventurous character made its appearance; a seductive, melancholy, and yielding softness--which, however, changed at once into the harshest coldness the moment he who had been encouraged by it began to grow warmer, and attempted to seize the whole hand by means of the little finger she held out to him. She would thrust back any such deluded being into his place with the most cutting irony, and from that moment would treat him with pitiless disfavor, without quite setting him free.
"Several of my acquaintances had discovered this to their cost. They gave me such minute accounts of their disgraceful defeats that I recognized in this woman a type of those perfectly cold-blooded coquettes who are--to the credit of the sex be it said--but rarely met with. The aversion I had felt toward this sea-monster, from the very first moment I had set eyes on her, was only the more confirmed by this; but, at the same time, the thought sprang up in me that it might be a good work, a meritorious act toward the whole male population of the island, if I could succeed in catching this fisher of men in her own net.