“Being a witch. I knew you would hurt me, when I first saw you, and I tried to protect myself by being kind to you.” “Oh, dear Lady Ver!” I said, deeply moved. “I would not hurt you for the world, and indeed, you misjudge me; I have kept the bargain to the very letter and--spirit.” “Yes, I know you have to the letter, at least--but why did Robert go out of the box last night?” she demanded, wearily. “He said he had got a chill, did not he?” I replied, lamely. She clasped her hands passionately. “A chill!!! You don’t know Robert! he never had a chill in his life,” she said. “Oh, he is the dearest, dearest being in the world. He makes me believe in good and all things honest. He isn’t vicious, he isn’t a prig, and he knows the world, and he lives in its ways like the rest of us, and yet he doesn’t begin by thinking every woman is fair game, and undermining what little self-respect she may have left to her.” “Yes.” I said. I found nothing else to say. “If I had had a husband like that I would never have yawned,” she went on, “and, besides, Robert is too masterful, and would be too jealous to let one divert oneself with another.” “Yes,” I said again, and continued to smooth her forehead. “He has sentiment, too--he is not matter-of-fact and brutal--and oh, you should see him on a horse, he is too, too beautiful!” She stretched out her arms in a movement of weariness that was pathetic, and touched me. “You have known him a long, long time?” I said, gently. “Perhaps five years, but only casually until this season. I was busy with some one else before. I have played with so many.” Then she roused herself up. “But Robert is the only one who has never made love to me. Always dear and sweet and treating me like a queen, as if I were too high for that, and having his own way, and not caring a pin for any one’s opinion. And I have wanted him to make love to me often. But now I realize it is no use. Only you sha’n’t have him, Snake-girl! I told him as we were going to the Opera you were as cold as ice, and were playing with Christopher, and I am going to take him down to Northumberland with me to-morrow out of your way. He shall be my devoted friend at any rate. You would break his heart, and I shall still hold you to your promise.” I said nothing. “Do you hear, I say _you_ would break his heart. He would be only capable of loving straight to the end. The kind of love any other woman would die for, but you--you are Carmen.” At all events not _she_, nor any other woman, shall ever see what I am, or am not. My heart is not for them to peck at. So I said, calmly: “Carmen was stabbed.” “And serve her right! Fascinating, fiendish demon!” Then she laughed, her mood changing. “Did you see Charlie?” she said. “We breakfasted together.” “Cheerful person, isn’t he?” “No,” I said. “He looked cross and ill.” “Ill!” she said, with a shade of anxiety. “Oh, you only mean dyspeptic.” “Perhaps.”