"What, _tell!_" cried Kitty, scornfully, "and get you into trouble, too? No, indeed, I know Mr. Rutledge well enough to know he'd have been angry with you as well as with me; and if you take my advice, Miss, you won't say a word about it. One's enough to take the blow; it won't make it any easier to have another getting it too. Just let the matter stand as it is; it will be all right. There, don't fret!" she exclaimed, cheerfully; "it worries me to death to see you mind it so! Why, Miss, it's nothing; how need you care?" "But, Kitty," I exclaimed, clinging to a last hope, "was the dress much spoiled?" "Oh dear, yes! muddied, torn, stained, as if you'd been dragged through the streets in it." Our conversation was again abruptly brought to a close by the advent of Mary, this time with a message to Kitty from Mrs. Arnold, desiring her help downstairs. And again, turning my face to the pillow, with a miserable sigh, I was left alone. CHAPTER XII. "The very gentlest of all human natures He joined to courage strong, And love outreaching unto all God's creatures, With sturdy hate of wrong." WHITTIER. Evening was closing in, and filling the little room where I lay with fitful shadows, which the tiny blaze of fire in the grate was incompetent to dispel. If it had been possible for me to be more miserable than I had been all day, I should indeed have "loathed the hour" when gloom and darkness so palpably and hopelessly descend, but the climax of misery and self-reproach had been reached by daylight, and outward dreariness could only increase, in a very slight degree, the inward gloom. The faults I had been guilty of, and the errors into which I had led, or allowed Kitty to go, seemed to me, and justly, the first steps in a most dangerous path. I fully realized the sins, and their effect upon my conscience, apart from their consequences and punishment. These last, I was aware, were hard enough. I knew I had done what must lower me in Mr. Rutledge's esteem; to be the accomplice in a deception, however slight, was to sink just that much in his regard, whose rigid truthfulness and honor were offended by the least prevarication. I knew I had given Mrs. Roberts grounds for all her former distrust and aversion, and placed myself lower than she could have estimated me. Above all, poor Kitty was the victim on whom it fell hardest, and how much of the blame of not checking her or guiding her right lay on my shoulders, I dared not think. I was really attached to the brave, quick-witted girl, and remembered, with humiliation, how ignorant and untaught she was, and how naturally and unavoidably her faults were the results of her unguided impetuosity, while mine were committed in the light of an instructed conscience and educated intellect.