But I did not like the idea. I knew he would be so vexed, and I could not bear to vex him. I feared it might drive him away from me for always. The wish to please him stood out first, not the wish to do what was right. I began to have a feeling that all my happiness was bound up in him. For days past I had let myself think a deal too much about Mr. Russell; and now the words he had spoken had taken me altogether captive. Rupert was nothing to me any more. I was ready to leave father, mother, home, everything—for him. It is natural for a girl to feel so; natural and not wrong, when other things are right. If Mr. Russell had been a man of the right stamp, coming openly and honestly to seek me, with my parents' consent, there was no reason why I shouldn't be willing. Only, I didn't know him at all to be a man of the right stamp; and he had not said a word to my father or mother. He had got me to promise not to tell them either. That was wrong to begin with. And if the first step into a path is wrong, then each step after which takes one along the path is only a going more astray. Mother saw me pass the window, and she came into the kitchen. I felt her eyes on my face, and I could not look up to meet them. "Where have you been?" asked she. "In the garden, mother," I said, hanging my head, and wishing my cheeks didn't burn so. "That's nothing to be ashamed of, is it?" says she. "What took you into the garden?" "I—wanted some parsley," I said. For a moment I couldn't recollect what had taken me first. "Did the parsley keep you all this time?" says she, as quiet as anything. "No, mother," I said; "it wasn't only the parsley. It was—I went along the path. And Mr. Russell was there. He came to ask —" "To ask about Mary, I suppose?" says mother, in her dry-like tone. "Yes; but he heard about her just an hour ago, Kitty. He's in a great hurry to hear again." "She's so ill," I said. "Yes, that's true. She's been worse," mother said. "And he seemed—he seemed—so unhappy," I went on. "I just stayed a minute—to—to comfort—" And then the thought of the way he had used that word, calling me "a little comfort," rushed up, and my cheeks burnt redder than ever. "To comfort him!" says she. "Yes, that's very pretty. But you're a young woman now, Kitty, and he is a young man. So next time you find him unhappy, you had best come straight and tell me, and I'll do the comforting." Mother meant it for a rebuke, I knew, though she didn't speak angrily; for it never was her way to show anger.