"I should think, mother," I observed, "that if he wants to marry into this family, and is not merely being dragged into it, that he ought to see the worst at the start." She glared, without speaking. "You know," I continued, "it would be a dreadful thing to have the ceremony performed and everything too late to back out, and then have ME sprung on him. It wouldn't be honest, would it?" "Barbara!" she said in a terrible tone. "First disobedience, and now sarcasm. If your father was only here! I feel so alone and helpless." Her tone cut me to the heart. After all she was my own mother, or at least maintained so, in spite of numerous questions engendered by our lack of resemblance, moral as well as physical. But I did not offer to embarrass her, as she was at that moment poring out her tea. I hid my misery behind the morning paper, and there I beheld the fated vision. Had I felt any doubt as to the state of my affections it was settled then. My heart leaped in my bosom. My face suffused. My hands trembled so that a piece of sausage slipped from my fork. His picture looked out at me with that well remembered gaze from the depths of the morning paper! Oh, Adrian, Adrian! Here in the same city as I, looking out over perchance the same newspaper to perchance the same sun, wondering--ah, what was he wondering? I was not even then, in that first rapture, foolish about him. I knew that to him I was probably but a tender memory. I knew, too, that he was but human and probably very conceited. On the other hand, I pride myself on being a good judge of character, and he carried nobility in every lineament. Even the obliteration of one eye by the printer could only hamper but not destroy his dear face. "Barbara," mother said sharply. "I am speaking. Are you being sulky?" "Pardon me, mother," I said in my gentlest tones. "I was but dreaming." And as she made no reply, but rang the bell viciously, I went on, pursuing my line of thought. "Mother, were you ever in love?" "Love! What sort of love?" I sat up and stared at her. "Is there more than one sort?" I demanded. "There is a very silly, schoolgirl love," she said, eying me, "that people outgrow and blush to look back on." "Do you?" "Do I what?" "Do you blush to look back on it?" Mother rose and made a sweeping gesture with her right arm. "I wash my hands of you!" she said. "You are impertinent and indelicate. At your age I was an innocent child, not troubling with things that did not concern me. As for love, I had never heard of it until I came out." "Life must have burst on you like an explosion," I observed. "I suppose you thought that babies----" "Silence!" mother shrieked. And seeing that she persisted in ignoring the real things of life while in my presence, I went out, clutching the precious paper to my heart. JANUARY 15TH. I am alone in my boudoir (which is really the old schoolroom, and used now for a sewing room).