“But still there was one leaden weight on me,—the story I had told [Mrs. Teed] the day before. It seemed as though the forgiveness was not thorough, nor of full value while part of the offence was concealed. How easy it would have been I now saw to confess the whole offence at once, how difficult now! Remembrance, however, of the sorrow of the day before, and some innate love of truth, as I hope, urged me on, and when, after prayers [Mrs. Teed] passed away through the door at the extreme end of the schoolroom, I ran to meet her at the foot of the great staircase which she must ascend to her private rooms, and said hurriedly, ‘Mothy, I think I did not tell you quite the truth yesterday. I said I did not know who picked out the bit of yellow quartz. I think I _did_ know I did.’ ‘Thank God, my child,’ she said gently but solemnly, ‘that you have told me the truth now. It is better than a thousand pieces of quartz.’... Reward enough I certainly had at the time in my lightened heart from that moment, but the effort I had made seemed hardly to merit such rich recompense as it received some time after when I heard that Mothy had said that she would believe everything told her by [S. J.-B.] as if she had seen it herself. Oh, how proud and happy was I at that moment, and the desire fully to merit testimony so inexpressibly sweet to me had, I verily believe, far more effect on the truthfulness of all my after life than any suffering or punishment could have had; and it in great measure saved me from sinking utterly in after time into that slough of deceit into which almost all schoolgirls do fall at one time or another in more difficult circumstances and in the midst of a lower tone than that of Hertford House. And,—though many will deem, and perhaps rightly, the distinction of little worth,—though often in those after days, under less noble rule, guilty of equivocation, I do not think I ever from that day told a lie.” We return to the diary: