You don't think, though, do you, that I should ever have felt so certain sure again, when she promised? I should always have thought, she might forget!
Ah! mother was a rare one. There's not many like her. She wasn't overmuch given to promises at any time; but once she did promise, she'd do it.
And I had promised Mr. Russell not to tell. I had promised lightly—that's to say, without weighing it first. Was I to break the promise lightly?
Something whispered to me, as I went back, dropping into a slow walk—something whispered, "Tell out plain to Mr. Russell that the promise was wrong, and that you can't keep it."
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.