ked at me, his
lovely, expressive blue eyes swimming with wrath and reproach and--oh, how
it hurt me!--contempt. Christopher was leaning over the back of my chair,
quite close, in a devoted attitude.

Lord Robert did not speak, but if a look could wither I must have turned
into a dead oak-leaf. It awoke some devil in me. What had _I_ done to be
annihilated so! _I_ was playing perfectly fair--keeping my word to Lady
Ver, and--oh, I felt as if it were breaking my heart.

But that look of Lord Robert's! It drove me to distraction, and every
instinct to be wicked and attractive that I possess came up in me. I
leaned over to Lady Ver, so that I must be close to him, and I said little
things to her, never one word to him; but I moved my seat, making it
certain the corner of his eye must catch sight of me, and I allowed my
shoulders to undulate the faintest bit to that Spanish music. Oh, I can
dance as Carmen, too! Mrs. Carruthers had me taught every time we went to
Paris. She loved to see it herself.

I could hear Christopher breathing very quickly. "My God!" he whispered,
"a man would go to hell for you."

Lord Robert got up abruptly and went out of the box.

Then it was as if Don Jose's dagger plunged into my heart, not Carmen's.
That sounds high-flown, but I mean it--a sudden, sick, cold sensation, as
if everything was numb. Lady Ver turned round pettishly to Christopher.
"What on earth is the matter with Robert?" she said.

"There is a Persian proverb which asserts a devil slips in between two
winds," said Christopher. "Perhaps that is what has happened in this box
to-night."

Lady Ver laughed harshly, and I sat there still as death. And all the time
the music and the movement on the stage went on. I am glad she is murdered
in the end--glad! Only I would like to have seen the blood gush out. I am
fierce--fierce--sometimes.

300 PARK STREET,

Friday morning, _November 25th._

I know just the meaning of dust and ashes, for that is what I felt I had
had for breakfast this morning, the day after "Carmen."

Lady Ver had given orders she was not to be disturbed, so I did not go
near her, and crept down to the dining-room, quite forgetting the master
of the house had arrived. There he was, a strange, tall, lean man with
fair hair, and sad, cross, brown eyes, and a nose inclined to pink at the
tip--a look of indig