Small sympathy and smaller joy is there in it now--it wears only a lantern-jawed, lack-lustre despondency.

I practise a galvanized smile, and say out loud, as if in dialogue with some interlocutor: "Yes, _delightful_!--I am _so_ pleased!" but there is more mirth in the enforced grin of an unfleshed skull than in mine.
That will never take in Barbara.

I try again--once, twice--each time with less prosperity than the last.

Then I give it up.

I must trust to Providence.
As the time for her coming draws nigh, I fall to thinking of the different occasions since my marriage, on which I have watched for expected comings from this window--have searched that bend in the drive with impatient eyes--and of the disappointment to which, on the two occasions that rise most prominently before my mind's eye, I became a prey.
Well, I am to be subject to no disappointment--if it _would_ be a disappointment--to-day.
Almost before I expect her--almost before she is due--she is here in the room with me, and we are looking at one another.