I told a lie--a lie more of the letter than the spirit--and since then I have spent six months of my flourishing youth absolutely devoid of pleasure, and largely penetrated with pain.
I have stood just outside my paradise, peeping under and over the flaming sword of the angel that guards it.

I have been near enough to smell the flowers--to see the downy, perfumed fruits--to hear the song of the angels as they go up and down within its paths; but I have been outside.
Now I have told another lie, and I suppose--nay, what better can I hope ?--that I shall live in the same state of weary, disproportioned retribution to the end of the chapter.
These are the thoughts, interspersed and diversified with loud sighs, that are employing my mind one ripe and misty morning a few days later than the incidents last detailed.
Barbara is to arrive to-day.

She is coming to pay us a visit--coming, like the lady mentioned by Tennyson, in "In Memoriam"-- not, indeed, "to bring her babe," but to "make her boast." And how, pray, am I to listen with complacent congratulation to this boast?
For the first time in my life I dread the coming of Barbara.

How am I, whose acting, on the few occasions when I have attempted it, has been of the most improbably wooden description--how am I, I say, to counterfeit the extravagant joy, the lively sympathy, that Barbara will expect--and naturally expect--from me?
I get up and look at myself in the glass.

Assuredly I shall have to take some severe measures with my countenance before it falls under my sister's gaze.