and some pains. That these are not usually given to it, - that
numbers of people accept a few stock commonplace expressions of the
face as the whole list of characteristics, and neither seek nor
know the refinements that are truest, - that You, for instance,
give a great deal of time and attention to the reading of music,
Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Hebrew, if you please, and do not
qualify yourself to read the face of the master or mistress looking
over your shoulder teaching it to you, - I assume to be five
hundred times more probable than improbable. Perhaps a little
self-sufficiency may be at the bottom of this; facial expression
requires no study from you, you think; it comes by nature to you to
know enough about it, and you are not to be taken in.

I confess, for my part, that I HAVE been taken in, over and over
again. I have been taken in by acquaintances, and I have been
taken in (of course) by friends; far oftener by friends than by any
other class of persons. How came I to be so deceived? Had I quite
misread their faces?

No. Believe me, my first impression of those people, founded on
face and manner alone, was invariably true. My mistake was in
suffering them to come nearer to me and explain themselves away.



II.


The partition which separated my own office from our general outer
office in the City was of thick plate-glass. I could see through