Kate took more interest in this melan- choly, middle-aged man than she would have done if she had not been on the out- look for her Western type, -- the man who was to combine all the qualities of chivalry, daring, bombast, and generosity, seasoned with piquant grammar, which she firmly believed to be the real thing. But notwith- standing this kindly and somewhat curious interest, she might never have made his acquaintance if it had not been for a rather unpleasant adventure.英文原著 · 《A Mountain Woman》
Zoe folded her arms and gazed after him with undisguised admiration. How well everything he did became him; his firing up--his _brusquerie--_the very movements of his body, all so piquant, charming, and unwomanly! As he vanished from her admiring eyes, she turned, with flaming cheeks, on Miss Maitland, and said, "Well, aunt, you have driven them both out at the window; now, say something pretty to Fanny and me, and drive us out at the door."英文原著 · 《A Woman-Hater》
Robert knew the girl, and he talked to her a little in the boat. No one present understood what they said. Her name was Mariequita. She had a round, sly, piquant face and pretty black eyes. Her hands were small, and she kept them folded over the handle of her basket. Her feet were broad and coarse. She did not strive to hide them. Edna looked at her feet, and noticed the sand and slime between her brown toes.英文原著 · 《Awakening & Selected Short Stories》
That night Prince Boris wrote a long letter to his "chere maman," in piquantly misspelt French, giving her the gossip of the court, and such family news as she usually craved. The purport of the letter, however, was only disclosed in the final paragraph, and then in so negative a way that it is doubtful whether the Princess Martha fully understood it.英文原著 · 《Beauty and The Beast》
We have a child here whose father was lynched. Isn't that a piquant detail to have in one's history?英文原著 · 《Dear Enemy》
But it would be a piquant situation, wouldn't it, if Sandy and I should discover that we were falling in love with each other, he with a perfectly good wife in the insane asylum and I with an outraged fiance in Washington? I don't know but what the wisest thing for me to do is to resign at once and take myself home, where I can placidly settle down to a few months of embroidering "S McB" on table-cloths, like any other respectable engaged girl.英文原著 · 《Dear Enemy》