No! I can’t bear it. All the morning I have been in a fever, first hot and then cold. What will it be like. Oh! I shall faint when he kisses me. And I know he will be dreadful like that, I have seen it in his eye--he will eat me up. Oh! I am sure I shall hate it. No man has ever kissed me in my life, and I can’t judge, but I am sure it is frightful, unless----I feel as if I shall go crazy if I stay here any longer. I can’t, I can’t stop and wait, and face it. I must have some air first. There is a misty fog. I would like to go out and get lost in it, and I _will_ too! Not get lost, perhaps, but go out in it, and alone. I won’t have even Véronique. I shall go by myself into the Park. It is growing nearly dark, though only three o’clock. I have got an hour. It looks mysterious, and will soothe me, and suit my mood, and then, when I come in again, I shall perhaps be able to bear it bravely, kisses and all. CLARIDGE’S, _Sunday evening, November 27th._ I have a great deal to write--and yet it is only a few hours since I shut up this book, and replaced the key on my bracelet. By a quarter past three I was making my way through Grosvenor Square. Everything was misty and blurred, but not actually a thick fog, or any chance of being lost. By the time I got into the Park it had lifted a little. It seemed close and warm, and as I went on I got more depressed. I have never been out alone before; that in itself seemed strange, and ought to have amused me. The image of Christopher kept floating in front of me, his face seemed to have the expression of a satyr. Well, at all events, he would never be able to break my heart like “Alicia Verney’s”--nothing could ever make me care for him. I tried to think of all the good I was going to get out of the affair, and how really fond I am of Branches. I walked very fast, people loomed at me, and then disappeared in the mist. It was getting almost dusk, and suddenly I felt tired, and sat down on a bench. I had wandered into a side path where there were no chairs. On the bench before mine I I saw, as I passed, a tramp huddled up. I wondered what his thoughts were, and if he felt any more miserable than I did. I daresay I was crouching in a depressed position too. Not many people went by, and every moment it grew darker. In all my life, even on the days when Mrs. Carruthers taunted me about mamma being nobody, I have never felt so wretched. Tears kept rising in my eyes, and I did not even worry to blink them away. Who would see me--and who in the world would care if they did see. Suddenly I was conscious that a very perfect figure was coming out of the mist towards me, but not until he was close to me, and stopping with a start peered into my face, did I recognize it was Lord Robert. “Evangeline!” he exclaimed, in a voice of consternation. “I--what, oh, what is the matter?” No wonder he was surprised. Why he had not taken me for some tramp too, and passed on, I don’t know.