From the very beginning note to the end I was feeling--feeling. Oh, how I understand her--Carmen!--_fruit défendu_ attracted her so--the beautiful, wicked, fascinating snake. I also wanted to dance, and to move like that, and I unconsciously quivered perhaps. I was cold as ice, and fearfully excited. The back of Lord Robert’s beautifully set head impeded my view at times. How exquisitely groomed he is, and one could see at a glance _his_ mother had not been a housemaid. I never have seen anything look so well bred as he does. Lady Ver was talking to him in a cooing, low voice, after the first act, and the second act, and indeed even when the third act had begun. He seemed much more _empressé_ with her than he generally does. It--it hurt me--that and the music and the dancing, and Mr. Carruthers whispering passionate little words at intervals, even though I paid no attention to them, but altogether I, too, felt a kind of madness. Suddenly Lord Robert turned round, and for five seconds looked 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 leant 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, Nov. 25th._