“I was as little given to romance as a ladies’ doctor; and yet, sitting in that box watching the turn of her beautiful head as she looked towards the stage, I said to myself, ‘I’ll take good care she never gets the upper hand of _me_. If a man once allowed himself to like her at all, she is just the sort of woman who would blight his whole life for him, and hunt the poor devil down to his grave!’ Somebody else seemed to have no such misgivings, or to have arrived at a stage of infatuation when all personal considerations had gone by the board. If ever I saw a calf led to the slaughter it was Count V——, a calf, too, whose throat few women could have cut without compunction. Handsome, manly, rich, affectionate, and sincere, worshipping his deity with all the reckless devotion, all the unscrupulous generosity of his brave Hungarian heart, I saw his very lip quiver under its heavy moustache when she turned her glittering eyes on him with some allusion called up by the business of the stage, and the proud, manly face that had never quailed before an enemy grew white in the intensity of its emotion. What made me think of a stag I once found lying dead in a Styrian pass, and a golden eagle feasting on him with her talons buried in his heart? “The Gräfinn, to whom the box belonged, noticed my abstraction. ‘Don’t fall in love with her,’ she whispered; ‘I can’t spare you just yet. Isn’t she beautiful?’ “‘You introduced me,’ was my answer, ‘but you never told me her name.’ “‘How stupid!’ said the Gräfinn. ‘At present she is a Madame _de_ St. Croix, an Englishwoman, nevertheless, and a widow, but not likely to remain so long.’ And with a mischievous laugh she gave me her hand as I left the box, bowing to Madame _de_ St. Croix and also to the Hungarian, who in his happy pre-occupation was perfectly unconscious of my politeness. “I saw them again in the crush-room. The Gräfinn had picked up an _attaché_ to some legation, who put her dutifully into her carriage. The Hungarian was still completely engrossed with Madame _de_ St. Croix. I have not yet forgotten the look on his handsome face when she drove off with her friend. ‘He’s a fool,’ I said to myself; ‘and yet a woman might well be proud to make a fool of such a man as that.’ “I left London in the middle of the season and thought no more of Madame _de_ St. Croix. I had seen a pretty picture, I had heard a strain of sweet music, I had turned over the page of an amusing romance—there was an end of it.