“Here is a whole page of my diary filled; and nothing written yet that is of the slightest use to me! My miserable made-up story must be told over again here, while the incidents are fresh in my memory—or how am I to refer to it consistently on after-occasions when I may be obliged to speak of it again?
“There was nothing new in what I told him; it was the commonplace rubbish of the circulating libraries. A dead father; a lost fortune; vagabond brothers, whom I dread ever seeing again; a bedridden mother dependent on my exertions—No! I can’t write it down! I hate myself, I despise myself, when I remember that he believed it because I said it—that he was distressed by it because it was my story! I will face the chances of contradicting myself—I will risk discovery and ruin—anything rather
