"Why, child! because I wish to train your mind to be sure. Nothing tests deportment so severely as wandering round a Gothick ruin. However, they tell me that Gothick will soon be a la Mode, and who am I to dispute the commands of fashion?" Upon the heels of this humble interrogation, the widow betook herself to bed. "When you have undressed my mamma, Betty, come to my chamber, I have a thousand things to tell you," Phyllida whispered as they went up the narrow stairs. She lighted all the candles in her room and looked round in sudden affright. It was as if some one had trespassed upon those virginal solitudes while she was away. Yet her room was the same as usual; the dimity covers were all in their places: the fire was burning merrily in the hearth: the bed-cloaths were turned back, fresh, cool and lavendered. Her slippers knelt devoutly by the fender: the fire-irons looked just as stilted and apologetick as usual. Everything was perfectly familiar, perfectly ordinary and perfectly safe; yet something in the room was strange, or was it herself who was altered? Was she out of harmony with this palace of amber morning dreams, this treasure-box of twilight hopes and imaginations? Down she sat in the big flowered arm-chair and stared at the crackling logs--a stranger to her own possessions, and, as she untied one by one the ribbands from her glinting chestnut hair, she seemed to smell the jasmine of Courteen Grange and hear her father calling below her casement to come down quickly and count the buds on the York and Lancaster rose, as he was used to call in those sweet dead Junes. Presently came Betty with a soft knock and Phyllida, starting away from the host of childish memories that assailed her, sprang up as the maid came in on tiptoe. "Now, sit down, Betty, and listen with all your ears, for I dearly need your advice." "My sweet one, I'm listening to 'ee," said Betty, pulling forward a fat lop-eared hassock and squeezing herself as close to the fender as possible. "Betty, Mr. Amor kissed me this evening, and what should I do?" "What were 'ee best to do? Why think no more about it, for indeed I dare vow you're not the first maid that was kissed." "But the worst of the matter is that, though I struggled hard to escape, and though I detested him for his persistence, yet, oh! Betty, I don't like to tell you--I did not struggle as hard as I might have done." As she made this confession, Phyllida went carnation red from forehead to pointed dimpled chin. "There's no call for blushes," said Betty emphatically, "for you must learn the love of man soon or late, and Mr. Vernon is a proper enough gentleman for sure." "And he said we should presently elope." "Oh! time enough to be wed come three years or more," commented Betty. "Oh! but you would not have me allow a gentleman to take my hand, and kiss me, and call me his dearest life without being married immediately. It would be most unbecoming."