— she will certainly look a little bewildered for a moment, but she will neither dream of reasoning with me nor of interfering with my plans. She will quietly try to grasp that it is not any longer Erik and an engagement which is the order of the day, but recklessness and rendezvous, and when the hour for the meeting strikes, she will sit at home with a heart beating like my own, and she will, like the horrid glutton she is—enjoy all my dainty food and champagne in her thoughts.
I AM most likely going to the rendezvous to-morrow. When I have had that experience I will settle down. Again I will become a virtuous lady, and before I accept Erik's proposal I will, like Queen Dagmar in the old ballad, confess my terrible crime.
I called on Christiane this morning. She became quite excited at the idea that we were going to a rendezvous. I instructed her in her part. To-morrow she will come and ask me to dinner, and she will also promise mother, that I shall be seen safely home afterwards.
There is no social intercourse between Christiane's parents and mine—they hardly know each other by sight—and there is, therefore, no possibility of being discovered.
Christiane thought it all extremely romantic and fascinating. I had really, in the end, to remind her that it was not at all becoming to a young girl to show so much eagerness.
