"To think that I ever cared for him!" I said.
"I doubt you didn't," says she.
"Oh, but I did, mother."
"You cared a deal for the fuss he made with you," says she. "That's at the bottom of half the silly marriages that's made; and that's a wonderful different thing from caring for himself." And then she says, "He's a bad man."
"He isn't a good man, I'm afraid," said I.
"He's a long way off from that," said she. "There's different sorts of badness, Kitty. A man may be resolute set on evil, or he may drift into evil just from not caring. I don't know as it makes much odds how he comes there—only I'd have more hopes of the resolute man of the two. For if he came out of evil, he'd do it with a will, and stay out; but if Mr. Russell's pulled out, he's as like as not to drift in again."
And wasn't it true?
"Only you wouldn't say there was no hope for a weak man, mother?"
"No," she answered. "There's hope always for every man. God's grace can keep firm the very weakest. All the same," says she, "I'd sooner have to do with a man that's staunch by nature, than with a poor limp thing that's bent by every puff of wind. There's a deal more to be made of the one than the other," says she.
"Rupert wasn't limp," I said; and it was strange I should have spoken of him just then. I don't know why I did, except that he'd been a deal in my thoughts for a great while past. I often wished I could just tell him I was sorry for all the hard words I'd said.