“Abused his trust indeed!” said Kate. “John, you are not to say a word; she does not understand. Why, it was I who did it all! I gave him no peace. I kept talking to him of things I had no business with; and he is only a man--indeed he is only a boy. Mamma, won’t you kiss me, please?” said Kate, all at once sinking into the meekest of tones; upon which Mrs Mitford, quite overcome, and wanting to kiss her son first, and with a hundred questions in her mind to pour out upon him, yet submitted, and put her arm round the stranger who was clinging to her and kissed Kate--but not with her heart. She had kissed her a great deal more tenderly only yesterday, just to say good-night; and then the three stood silent in the darkness, and the scene took another shape, and John’s beatitude was past. The moment the mother joined them another world came in. The enchanted world, which held only two figures, opened up and disappeared like a scene at a theatre; and lo! there appeared all round a mass of other people to whom John’s passion was a matter of indifference or a thing to be disapproved. Suddenly the young pair felt themselves standing not only before John’s anxious mother, but before Mr Crediton, gloomy and wretched; before Dr Mitford, angry and mortified; before the whole neighbourhood, who would judge them without much consideration of mercy. John’s reflections at this moment were harder to support than those of Kate, for he knew he was giving up for her sake the vocation he had been trained to, and the awful necessity of declaring his resolution to his father and mother was before him. Whereas the worst that could be said of Kate was that she was a little flirt, and had turned John Mitford’s head--and she had heard as much before. But, notwithstanding, they were both strangely sobered all in a moment as they stood there, fallen out of their fairy sphere, by Mrs Mitford’s side. “My dears, I must hear all about this after,” she said, with a kind of tremulous solemnity, “but in the mean time you must come in to tea. Whatever we do, we must not be late for prayers.” CHAPTER XI.