Last night Mrs. Hambledon took me to the _play_. It was for the first
time in my life, and I was full of curiosity. It was a long drama,
pretty enough and sometimes very exciting. But I could see that though
the actress was very handsome and mostly so unhappy as to draw tears
from the spectators, there were people, especially some gentlemen, who
were more interested in looking at the box where I sat with Mrs.
Hambledon. Indeed, I could not pretend, when I found myself before my
glass that night, that I was not amazingly prettier than that Mrs.
Colebrook, about whose beauty the whole town goes mad.

When I recalled the hero's ravings about his Matilda's eyes and
cheeks, and her foot and her sylph-like waist, and her raven hair, I
wondered what _that_ young man would say of me if he were my lover and
I his persecuted mistress. The Matilda was a pleasing person enough;
but if I take her point by point, it would be absurd to speak of her
charms in the same breath with mine. Oh, my dear Molly, how beautiful
I thought you last night! How happy I should be, were I a dashing
young lover and eyes like _yours_ smiled on me. I never before thought
myself prettier than Madeleine, but now I do.

Lovers, love, mistress, bride; they talked of nothing else in the
play. And it was all ecstasy in their words, and nothing but _misery_
in fact (just as the Reverend Mother would have had it).

The young man who played the hero was a very fine fellow; and yet when
I conceive _him_ making love to me as he did last night to Mrs.
Colebrook, the notion seems really _too_ ludicrous!

What sort of man then is it I would allow to love me? I do not mind
the thought of lovers sighing and burning for me (as some do now
indeed, or pretend to) I like to feel that I can crush them with a
frown and revive them with a smile; I like to see them fighting for my
favour. But to give a man the right to love me, the right to my
smiles, the _right to me_! Indeed, I have yet seen _none_ who could
make me bear the thought.

And yet I think that I could love, and I know that the man that I am
to love must be living somewhere till fate brings him to me. He does
not think of me. He does not know of me. And neither of us, I suppose,
will taste life as life is till the day when we meet.

CAMDEN PLACE, BATH, _November 1st_.--Bath at last, which, must please
poor Mrs. Hambledon exceedingly, for she certainly did _not_ enjoy the
transit. I cannot conceive how people