textfiles/etext/FICTION/james-washington-135.txt

                                      1880

                               WASHINGTON SQUARE

                                 by Henry James

                         CHAPTER 1.

  DURING A PORTION of the first half of the present century, and
more particularly during the latter part of it, there flourished and
practiced in the city of New York a physician who enjoyed perhaps an
exceptional share of the consideration which, in the United States,
has always been bestowed upon distinguished members of the medical
profession. This profession in America has constantly been held in
honor, and more successfully than elsewhere has put forward a claim to
the epithet of "liberal." In a country in which, to play a social
part, you must either earn your income or make believe that you earn
it, the healing art has appeared in a high degree to combine two
recognized sources of credit. It belongs to the realm of the
practical, which in the United States is a great recommendation; and
it is touched by the light of science- a merit appreciated in a
community in which the love of knowledge has not always been
accompanied by leisure and opportunity.

  It was an element in Doctor Sloper's reputation that his learning
and his skill were very evenly balanced; he was what you might call
a scholarly doctor, and yet there was nothing abstract in his
remedies- he always ordered you to take something. Though he was
felt to be extremely thorough, he was not uncomfortably theoretic; and
if he sometimes explained matters rather more minutely than might seem
of use to the patient, he never went so far (like some practitioners
one had heard of) as to trust to the explanation alone, but always
left behind him an inscrutable prescription. There were some doctors
that left the prescription without offering any explanation at all;
and he did not belong to that class either, which was after all the
most vulgar. It will be seen that I am describing a clever man; and
this is really the reason why Doctor Sloper had become a local
celebrity.

  At the time at which we are chiefly concerned with him he was some
fifty years of age, and his popularity was at its height. He was
very witty, and he passed in the best society of New York for a man of
the world- which, indeed, he was, in a very sufficient degree. I
hasten to add, to anticipate possible misconception, that he was not
the least of a charlatan. He was a thoroughly honest man- honest in
a degree of which he had perhaps lacked the opportunity to give the
complete measure; and, putting aside the great good nature of the
circle in which he practiced, which was rather fond of boasting that
it possessed the "brightest" doctor in the country, he daily justified
his claim to the talents attributed to him by the popular voice. He
was an observer, even a philosopher, and to be bright was so natural
to him, and (as the popular voice said) came so easily, that he
never aimed at mere effect, and had none of the little tricks and
pretensions of second-rate reputations. It must be confessed that
fortune had favored him, and that he had found the path to
prosperity very soft to his tread. He had married, at the age of
twenty-seven, for love, a very charming girl, Miss Catherine
Harrington, of New York, who, in addition to her charms, had brought
him a solid dowry. Mrs. Sloper was amiable, graceful, accomplished,
elegant, and in 1820 she had been one of the pretty girls of the small
but promising capital which clustered about the Battery and overlooked
the Bay, and of which the uppermost boundary was indicated by the
grassy waysides of Canal Street. Even at the age of twenty-seven
Austin Sloper had made his mark sufficiently to mitigate the anomaly
of his having been chosen among a dozen suitors by a young woman of
high fashion, who had ten thousand dollars of income and the most
charming eyes in the island of Manhattan. These eyes, and some of
their accompaniments, were for about five years a source of extreme
satisfaction to the young physician, who was both a devoted and a very
happy husband.

  The fact of his having married a rich woman made no difference in
the line he had traced for himself, and he cultivated his profession
with as definite a purpose as if he still had no other resources
than his fraction of the modest patrimony which, on his father's
death, he had shared with his brothers and sisters. This purpose had
not been preponderantly to make money- it had been rather to learn
something and to do something. To learn something interesting, and
to do something useful- this was, roughly speaking, the program he had
sketched, and of which the accident of his wife having an income
appeared to him in no degree to modify the validity. He was fond of
his practice, and of exercising a skill of which he was agreeably
conscious, and it was so patent a truth that if he were not a doctor
there was nothing else he could be, that a doctor he persisted in
being, in the best possible conditions. Of course his easy domestic
situation saved him a good deal of drudgery, and his wife's
affiliation to the "best people" brought him a good many of those
patients whose symptoms are, if not more interesting in themselves
than those of the lower orders, at least more consistently
displayed. He desired experience, and in the course of twenty years he
got a great deal. It must be added that it came to him in some forms
which, whatever might have been their intrinsic value, made it the
reverse of welcome. His first child, a little boy of extraordinary
promise, as the doctor, who was not addicted to easy enthusiasm,
firmly believed, died at three years of age, in spite of everything
that the mother's tenderness and the father's science could invent
to save him. Two years later Mrs. Sloper gave birth to a second
infant- an infant of a sex which rendered the poor child, to the
doctor's sense, an inadequate substitute for his lamented
firstborn, of whom he had promised himself to make an admirable man.
The little girl was a disappointment; but this was not the worst. A
week after her birth the young mother, who, as the phrase is, had been
doing well, suddenly betrayed alarming symptoms, and before another
week had elapsed Austin Sloper was a widower.

  For a man whose trade was to keep people alive he had certainly done
poorly in his own family; and a bright doctor who within three years
loses his wife and his little boy should perhaps be prepared to see
either his skill or his affection impugned. Our friend, however,
escaped criticism; that is, he escaped all criticism but his own,
which was much the most competent and most formidable. He walked under
the weight of this very private censure for the rest of his days,
and bore forever the scars of a castigation to which the strongest
hand he knew had treated him on the night that followed his wife's
death. The world, which, as I have said, appreciated him, pitied him
too much to be ironical; his misfortune made him more interesting, and
even helped him to be the fashion. It was observed that even medical
families cannot escape the more insidious forms of disease, and
that, after all, Doctor Sloper had lost other patients besides the two
I have mentioned; which constituted an honorable precedent. His little
girl remained to him; and though she was not what he had desired, he
proposed to himself to make the best of her. He had on hand a stock of
unexpended authority, by which the child, in its early years, profited
largely. She had been named, as a matter of course, after her poor
mother, and even in her most diminutive babyhood the doctor never
called her anything but Catherine. She grew up a very robust and
healthy child, and her father, as he looked at her, often said to
himself that, such as she was, he at least need have no fear of losing
her. I say "such as she was," because, to tell the truth- But this
is a truth of which I will defer the telling.

                         CHAPTER 2.

  WHEN THE CHILD was about ten years old, he invited his sister,
Mrs. Penniman, to come and stay with him. The Miss Slopers had been
but two in number, and both of them had married early in life. The
younger, Mrs. Almond by name, was the wife of a prosperous merchant
and the mother of a blooming family. She bloomed herself, indeed,
and was a comely, comfortable, reasonable woman, and a favorite with
her clever brother, who, in the matter of women, even when they were
nearly related to him, was a man of distinct preferences. He preferred
Mrs. Almond to his sister Lavinia, who had married a poor clergyman,
of a sickly constitution and a flowery style of eloquence, and then,
at the age of thirty-three, had been left a widow- without children,
without fortune- with nothing but the memory of Mr. Penniman's flowers
of speech, a certain vague aroma of which hovered about her own
conversation. Nevertheless, he had offered her a home under his own
roof, which Lavinia accepted with the alacrity of a woman who had
spent the ten years of her married life in the town of Poughkeepsie.
The doctor had not proposed to Mrs. Penniman to come and live with him
indefinitely; he had suggested that she should make an asylum of his
house while she looked about for unfurnished lodgings. It is uncertain
whether Mrs. Penniman ever instituted a search for unfurnished
lodgings, but it is beyond dispute that she never found them. She
settled herself with her brother and never went away, and, when
Catherine was twenty years old, her Aunt Lavinia was still one of
the most striking features of her immediate entourage. Mrs. Penniman's
own account of the matter was that she had remained to take charge
of her niece's education. She had given this account, at least, to
everyone but the doctor, who never asked for explanations which he
could entertain himself any day with inventing. Mrs. Penniman,
moreover, though she had a good deal of a certain sort of artificial
assurance, shrunk, for indefinable reasons, from presenting herself to
her brother as a fountain of instruction. She had not a high sense
of humor, but she had enough to prevent her from making this
mistake; and her brother, on his side, had enough to excuse her, in
her situation, for laying him under contribution during a considerable
part of a lifetime. He therefore assented tacitly to the proposition
which Mrs. Penniman had tacitly laid down, that it was of importance
that the poor motherless girl should have a brilliant woman near
her. His assent could only be tacit, for he had never been dazzled
by his sister's intellectual luster. Save when he fell in love with
Catherine Harrington, he had never been dazzled, indeed, by any
feminine characteristics whatever; and though he was to a certain
extent what is called a ladies' doctor, his private opinion of the
more complicated sex was not exalted. He regarded its complications as
more curious than edifying, and he had an idea of the beauty of
reason, which was, on the whole, meagerly gratified by what he
observed in his female patients. His wife had been a reasonable woman,
but she was a bright exception; among several things that he was
sure of, this was perhaps the principal. Such a conviction, of course,
did little either to mitigate or to abbreviate his widowhood; and it
set a limit to his recognition, at the best, of Catherine's
possibilities and of Mrs. Penniman's ministrations. He nevertheless,
at the end of six months, accepted his sister's permanent presence
as an accomplished fact, and as Catherine grew older, perceived that
there were in effect good reasons why she should have a companion of
her own imperfect sex. He was extremely polite to Lavinia,
scrupulously, formally polite; and she had never seen him in anger but
once in her life, when he lost his temper in a theological
discussion with her late husband. With her he never discussed
theology, nor, indeed, discussed anything; he contented himself with
making known, very distinctly, in the form of a lucid ultimatum, his
wishes with regard to Catherine.

  Once, when the girl was about twelve years old, he had said to her:

  "Try and make a clever woman of her, Lavinia; I should like her to
be a clever woman."

  Mrs. Penniman, at this, looked thoughtful a moment. "My dear
Austin," she then inquired, "do you think it is better to be clever
than to be good?"

  "Good for what?" asked the doctor. "You are good for nothing
unless you are clever."

  From this assertion Mrs. Penniman saw no reason to dissent; she
possibly reflected that her own great use in the world was owing to
her aptitude for many things.

  "Of course I wish Catherine to be good," the doctor said next day,
"but she won't be any the less virtuous for not being a fool. I am not
afraid of her being wicked; she will never have the salt of malice
in her character. She is 'as good as good bread,' as the French say;
but six years hence I don't want to have to compare her to good
bread and butter."

  "Are you afraid she will be insipid? My dear brother, it is I who
supply the butter; so you needn't fear!" said Mrs. Penniman, who had
taken in hand the child's "accomplishments," overlooking her at the
piano, where Catherine displayed a certain talent, and going with
her to the dancing class, where it must be confessed that she made but
a modest figure.

  Mrs. Penniman was a tall, thin, fair, rather faded woman, with a
perfectly amiable disposition, a high standard of gentility, a taste
for light literature, and a certain foolish indirectness and obliquity
of character. She was romantic; she was sentimental; she had a passion
for little secrets and mysteries- a very innocent passion, for her
secrets had hitherto always been as unpractical as addled eggs. She
was not absolutely veracious; but this defect was of no great
consequence, for she had never had anything to conceal. She would have
liked to have a lover, and to correspond with him under an assumed
name, in letters left at a shop. I am bound to say that her
imagination never carried the intimacy further than this. Mrs.
Penniman had never had a lover, but her brother, who was very
shrewd, understood her turn of mind. "When Catherine is about
seventeen," he said to himself, "Lavinia will try and persuade her
that some young man with a moustache is in love with her. It will be
quite untrue; no young man, with a moustache or without, will ever
be in love with Catherine. But Lavinia will take it up, and talk to
her about it; perhaps, even, if her taste for clandestine operations
doesn't prevail with her, she will talk to me about it. Catherine
won't see it, and won't believe it, fortunately for her peace of mind;
poor Catherine isn't romantic."

  She was a healthy, well-grown child, without a trace of her mother's
beauty. She was not ugly; she had simply a plain, dull, gentle
countenance. The most that had ever been said for her was that she had
a "nice" face; and, though she was an heiress, no one had ever thought
of regarding her as a belle. Her father's opinion of her moral
purity was abundantly justified; she was excellently, imperturbably
good; affectionate, docile, obedient, and much addicted to speaking
the truth. In her younger years she was a good deal of a romp, and,
though it is an awkward confession to make about one's heroine, I must
add that she was something of a glutton. She never, that I know of,
stole raisins out of the pantry; but she devoted her pocket money to
the purchase of cream cakes. As regards this, however, a critical
attitude would be inconsistent with a candid reference to the early
annals of any biographer. Catherine was decidedly not clever; she
was not quick with her book, nor, indeed, with anything else. She
was not abnormally deficient, and she mustered learning enough to
acquit herself respectably in conversation with her contemporaries-
among whom it must be avowed, however, that she occupied a secondary
place. It is well known that in New York it is possible for a young
girl to occupy a primary one. Catherine, who was extremely modest, had
no desire to shine, and on most social occasions, as they are
called, you would have found her lurking in the background. She was
extremely fond of her father, and very much afraid of him; she thought
him the cleverest and handsomest and most celebrated of men. The
poor girl found her account so completely in the exercise of her
affections that the little tremor of fear that mixed itself with her
filial passion gave the thing an extra relish rather than blunted
its edge. Her deepest desire was to please him, and her conception
of happiness was to know that she had succeeded in pleasing him. She
had never succeeded beyond a certain point. Though, on the whole, he
was very kind to her, she was perfectly aware of this, and to go
beyond the point in question seemed to her really something to live
for. What she could not know, of course, was that she disappointed
him, though on three or four occasions the doctor had been almost
frank about it. She grew up peacefully and prosperously; but at the
age of eighteen, Mrs. Penniman had not made a clever woman of her.
Doctor Sloper would have liked to be proud of his daughter; but
there was nothing to be proud of in poor Catherine. There was nothing,
of course, to be ashamed of; but this was not enough for the doctor,
who was a proud man, and would have enjoyed being able to think of his
daughter as an unusual girl. There would have been a fitness in her
being pretty and graceful, intelligent and distinguished- for her
mother had been the most charming woman of her little day- and as
regards her father, of course he knew his own value. He had moments of
irritation at having produced a commonplace child, and he even went so
far at times as to take a certain satisfaction in the thought that his
wife had not lived to find her out. He was naturally slow in making
this discovery himself, and it was not till Catherine had become a
young lady grown that he regarded the matter as settled. He gave her
the benefit of a great many doubts; he was in no haste to conclude.
Mrs. Penniman frequently assured him that his daughter had a
delightful nature; but he knew how to interpret this assurance. It
meant, to his sense, that Catherine was not wise enough to discover
that her aunt was a goose- a limitation of mind that could not fail to
be agreeable to Mrs. Penniman. Both she and her brother, however,
exaggerated the young girl's limitations; for Catherine, though she
was very fond of her aunt, and conscious of the gratitude she owed
her, regarded her without a particle of that gentle dread which gave
its stamp to her admiration of her father. To her mind there was
nothing of the infinite about Mrs. Penniman; Catherine saw her all
at once, as it were, and was not dazzled by the apparition; whereas
her father's great faculties seemed, as they stretched away, to lose
themselves in a sort of luminous vagueness, which indicated, not that
they stopped, but that Catherine's own mind ceased to follow them.

  It must not be supposed that Doctor Sloper visited his
disappointment upon the poor girl, or ever let her suspect that she
had played him a trick. On the contrary, for fear of being unjust to
her, he did his duty with exemplary zeal, and recognized that she
was a faithful and affectionate child. Besides, he was a
philosopher: He smoked a good many cigars over his disappointment, and
in the fullness of time he got used to it. He satisfied himself that
he had expected nothing, though, indeed, with a certain oddity of
reasoning. "I expect nothing," he said to himself, "so that, if she
gives me a surprise, it will be all clear gain. If she doesn't, it
will be no loss." This was about the time Catherine had reached her
eighteenth year; so that it will be seen her father had not been
precipitate. At this time she seemed not only incapable of giving
surprises; it was almost a question whether she could have received
one- she was so quiet and irresponsive. People who expressed
themselves roughly called her stolid. But she was irresponsive because
she was shy, uncomfortably, painfully shy. This was not always
understood, and she sometimes produced an impression of insensibility.
In reality, she was the softest creature in the world.

                         CHAPTER 3.

  AS A CHILD she had promised to be tall; but when she was sixteen she
ceased to grow, and her stature, like most other points in her
composition, was not unusual. She was strong, however, and properly
made, and, fortunately, her health was excellent. It has been noted
that the doctor was a philosopher, but I would not have answered for
his philosophy if the poor girl had proved a sickly and suffering
person. Her appearance of health constituted her principal claim to
beauty; and her clear, fresh complexion, in which white and red were
very equally distributed, was, indeed, an excellent thing to see.
Her eye was small and quiet, her features were rather thick, her
tresses brown and smooth. A dull, plain girl she was called by
rigorous critics- a quiet, ladylike girl, by those of the more
imaginative sort; but by neither class was she very elaborately
discussed. When it had been duly impressed upon her that she was a
young lady- it was a good while before she could believe it- she
suddenly developed a lively taste for dress. A lively taste is quite
the expression to use. I feel as if I ought to write it very small,
her judgment in this matter was by no means infallible; it was
liable to confusions and embarrassments. Her great indulgence of it
was really the desire of a rather inarticulate nature to manifest
itself; she sought to be eloquent in her garments, and to make up
for her diffidence of speech by a fine frankness of costume. But if
she expressed herself in her clothes, it is certain that people were
not to blame for not thinking her a witty person. It must be added
that, though she had the expectation of a fortune- Doctor Sloper for a
long time had been making twenty thousand dollars a year by his
profession, and laying aside the half of it- the amount of money at
her disposal was not greater than the allowance made to many poorer
girls. In those days, in New York, there were still a few altar
fires flickering in the temple of republican simplicity, and Doctor
Sloper would have been glad to see his daughter present herself,
with a classic grace, as a priestess of this mild faith. It made him
fairly grimace, in private, to think that a child of his should be
both ugly and overdressed. For himself, he was fond of the good things
of life, and he made a considerable use of them; but he had a dread of
vulgarity, and even a theory that it was increasing in the society
that surrounded him. Moreover, the standard of luxury in the United
States thirty years ago was carried by no means so high as at present,
and Catherine's clever father took the old-fashioned view of the
education of young persons. He had no particular theory on the
subject; it had scarcely as yet become a necessity of self-defense
to have a collection of theories. It simply appeared to him proper and
reasonable that a well-bred young woman should not carry half her
fortune on her back. Catherine's back was a broad one, and would
have carried a good deal; but to the weight of the paternal
displeasure she never ventured to expose it, and our heroine was
twenty years old before she treated herself, for evening wear, to a
red satin gown trimmed with gold fringe, though this was an article
which, for many years, she had coveted in secret. It made her look,
when she sported it, like a woman of thirty; but oddly enough, in
spite of her taste for fine clothes, she had not a grain of
coquetry, and her anxiety when she put them on was as to whether they,
and not she, would look well. It is a point on which history has not
been explicit, but the assumption is warrantable; it was in the
royal raiment just mentioned that she presented herself at a little
entertainment given by her aunt, Mrs. Almond. The girl was at this
time in her twenty-first year, and Mrs. Almond's party was the
beginning of something very important.

  Some three or four years before this, Doctor Sloper had moved his
household gods uptown, as they say in New York. He had been living
ever since his marriage in an edifice of red brick, with granite
copings and an enormous fanlight over the door, standing in a street
within five minutes' walk of the City Hall, which saw its best days
(from the social point of view) about 1820. After this, the tide of
fashion began to set steadily northward, as, indeed, in New York,
thanks to the narrow channel in which it flows, it is obliged to do,
and the great hum of traffic rolled farther to the right and left of
Broadway. By the time the doctor changed his residence, the murmur
of trade had become a mighty uproar, which was music in the ears of
all good citizens interested in the commercial development, as they
delighted to call it, of their fortunate isle. Doctor Sloper's
interest in this phenomenon was only indirect- though, seeing that, as
the years went on, half his patients came to be overworked men of
business, it might have been more immediate- and when most of his
neighbors' dwellings (also ornamented with granite copings and large
fanlights) had been converted into offices, warehouses, and shipping
agencies, and otherwise applied to the base uses of commerce, he
determined to look out for a quieter home. The ideal of quiet and of
genteel retirement, in 1835, was found in Washington Square, where the
doctor built himself a handsome, modern, wide-fronted house, with a
big balcony before the drawing-room windows, and a flight of white
marble steps ascending to a portal which was also faced with white
marble. This structure, and many of its neighbors, which it exactly
resembled, were supposed, forty years ago, to embody the last
results of architectural science, and they remain to this day very
solid and honorable dwellings. In front of them was the Square,
containing a considerable quantity of inexpensive vegetation, enclosed
by a wooden paling, which increased its rural and accessible
appearance; and round the corner was the more august precinct of the
Fifth Avenue, taking its origin at this point with a spacious and
confident air which already marked it for high destinies. I know not
whether it is owing to the tenderness of early associations, but
this portion of New York appears to many persons the most
delectable. It has a kind of established repose which is not of
frequent occurrence in other quarters of the long, shrill city; it has
a riper, richer, more honorable look than any of the upper
ramifications of the great longitudinal thoroughfare- the look of
having had something of a social history. It was here, as you might
have been informed on good authority, that you had come into a world
which appeared to offer a variety of sources of interest; it was
here that your grandmother lived, in venerable solitude, and dispensed
a hospitality which commended itself alike to the infant imagination
and the infant palate; it was here that you took your first walks
abroad, following the nurserymaid with unequal step, and sniffing up
the strange odor of the ailanthus trees which at that time formed
the principal umbrage of the Square, and diffused an aroma that you
were not yet critical enough to dislike as it deserved; it was here,
finally, that your first school, kept by a broad-bosomed,
broad-based old lady with a ferule, who was always having tea in a
blue cup, with a saucer that didn't match, enlarged the circle both of
your observations and your sensations. It was here, at any rate,
that my heroine spent many years of her life; which is my excuse for
this topographical parenthesis.

  Mrs. Almond lived much farther uptown, in an embryonic street,
with a high number- a region where the extension of the city began
to assume a theoretic air, where poplars grew beside the pavement
(when there was one), and mingled their shade with the steep roofs
of desultory Dutch houses, and where pigs and chickens disported
themselves in the gutter. These elements of rural picturesqueness have
now wholly departed from New York street scenery; but they were to
be found within the memory of middle-aged persons in quarters which
now would blush to be reminded of them. Catherine had a great many
cousins, and with her Aunt Almond's children, who ended by being
nine in number, she lived on terms of considerable intimacy. When
she was younger they had been rather afraid of her; she was
believed, as the phrase is, to be highly educated, and a person who
lived in the intimacy of their Aunt Penniman had something of
reflected grandeur. Mrs. Penniman, among the little Almonds, was an
object of more admiration than sympathy. Her manners were strange
and formidable, and her mourning robes- she dressed in black for
twenty years after her husband's death, and then suddenly appeared,
one morning, with pink roses in her cap- were complicated in odd,
unexpected places with buckles, bugles, and pins, which discouraged
familiarity. She took children too hard, both for good and for evil,
and had an oppressive air of expecting subtle things of them; so
that going to see her was a good deal like being taken to church and
made to sit in a front pew. It was discovered after awhile, however,
that Aunt Penniman was but an accident in Catherine's existence, and
not a part of its essence, and that when the girl came to spend a
Saturday with her cousins, she was available for follow-my-master, and
even for leapfrog. On this basis an understanding was easily arrived
at, and for several years Catherine fraternized with her young
kinsmen. I say young kinsmen, because seven of the little Almonds were
boys, and Catherine had a preference for those games which are most
conveniently played in trousers. By degrees, however, the little
Almonds' trousers began to lengthen, and the wearers to disperse and
settle themselves in life. The elder children were older than
Catherine, and the boys were sent to college or placed in counting
rooms. Of the girls, one married very punctually, and the other as
punctually became engaged. It was to celebrate this latter event
that Mrs. Almond gave the little party I have mentioned. Her
daughter was to marry a stout young stockbroker, a boy of twenty: it
was thought a very good thing.

                         CHAPTER 4.

  MRS. PENNIMAN, with more buckles and bangles than ever, came, of
course, to the entertainment, accompanied by her niece; the doctor,
too, had promised to look in later in the evening. There was to be a
good deal of dancing, and before it had gone very far Marian Almond
came up to Catherine, in company with a tall young man. She introduced
the young man as a person who had a great desire to make your
heroine's acquaintance, and as a cousin of Arthur Townsend, her own
intended.

  Marian Almond was a pretty little person of seventeen, with a very
small figure and a very big sash, to the elegance of whose manners
matrimony had nothing to add. She already had all the airs of a
hostess, receiving the company, shaking her fan, saying that with so
many people to attend to she should have no time to dance. She made
a long speech about Mr. Townsend's cousin, to whom she administered
a tap with her fan before turning away to other cares. Catherine had
not understood all that she said; her attention was given to
enjoying Marian's ease of manner and flow of ideas, and to looking
at the young man, who was remarkably handsome. She had succeeded,
however, as she often failed to do when people were presented to
her, in catching his name, which appeared to be the same as that of
Marian's little stockbroker. Catherine was always agitated by an
introduction; it seemed a difficult moment, and she wondered that some
people- her new acquaintance at this moment, for instance- should mind
it so little. She wondered what she ought to say, and what would be
the consequences of her saying nothing. The consequences at present
were very agreeable. Mr. Townsend, leaving her no time for
embarrassment, began to talk to her with an easy smile, as if he had
known her for a year.

  "What a delightful party! What a charming house! What an interesting
family! What a pretty girl your cousin is!"

  These observations, in themselves of no great profundity, Mr.
Townsend seemed to offer for what they were worth, and as a
contribution to an acquaintance. He looked straight into Catherine's
eyes. She answered nothing; she only listened, and looked at him;
and he, as if he expected no particular reply, went on to say many
other things in the same comfortable and natural manner. Catherine,
though she felt tongue-tied, was conscious of no embarrassment; it
seemed proper that he should talk, and that she should simply look
at him. What made it natural was that he was so handsome, or,
rather, as she phrased it to herself, so beautiful. The music had been
silent for awhile, but it suddenly began again; and then he asked her,
with a deeper, intenser smile, if she would do him the honor of
dancing with him. Even to this inquiry she gave no audible assent; she
simply let him put his arm round her waist- as she did so, it occurred
to her more vividly than it had ever done before that this was a
singular place for a gentleman's arm to be- and in a moment he was
guiding her round the room in the harmonious rotation of the polka.
When they paused, she felt that she was red; and then, for some
moments, she stopped looking at him. She fanned herself, and looked at
the flowers that were painted on her fan. He asked her if she would
begin again, and she hesitated to answer, still looking at the
flowers.

  "Does it make you dizzy?" he asked, in a tone of great kindness.

  Then Catherine looked up at him; he was certainly beautiful, and not
at all red. "Yes," she said; she hardly knew why, for dancing had
never made her dizzy.

  "Ah, well, in that case," said Mr. Townsend, "we will sit still
and talk. I will find a good place to sit."

  He found a good place- a charming place, a little sofa that seemed
meant only for two persons. The rooms by this time were very full; the
dancers increased in number, and people stood close in front of
them, turning their backs, so that Catherine and her companion
seemed secluded and unobserved. "We will talk," the young man had
said, but he still did all the talking. Catherine leaned back in her
place, with her eyes fixed upon him, smiling, and thinking him very
clever. He had features like young men in pictures; Catherine had
never seen such features- so delicate, so chiseled and finished- among
the young New Yorkers whom she passed in the streets and met at
dancing parties. He was tall and slim, but he looked extremely strong.
Catherine thought he looked like a statue. But a statue would not talk
like that, and, above all, would not have eyes of so rare a color.
He had never been at Mrs. Almond's before; he felt very much like a
stranger; and it was very kind of Catherine to take pity on him. He
was Arthur Townsend's cousin- not very near, several times removed-
and Arthur had brought him to present him to the family. In fact, he
was a great stranger in New York. It was his native place; but he
had not been there for many years. He had been knocking about the
world, and living in queer corners; he had only come back a month or
two before. New York was very pleasant, only he felt lonely.

  "You see, people forget you," he said, smiling at Catherine with his
delightful gaze, while he leaned forward obliquely, turning toward
her, with his elbows on his knees.

  It seemed to Catherine that no one who had once seen him would
ever forget him; but though she made this reflection she kept it to
herself; almost as you would keep something precious.

  They sat there for some time. He was very amusing. He asked her
about the people that were near them; he tried to guess who some of
them were, and he made the most laughable mistakes. He criticized them
very freely, in a positive, offhand way. Catherine had never heard
anyone- especially any young man- talk just like that. It was the
way a young man might talk in a novel, or, better still, in a play, on
the stage, close before the footlights, looking at the audience, and
with everyone looking at him, so that you wondered at his presence
of mind. And yet Mr. Townsend was not like an actor; he seemed so
sincere, so natural. This was very interesting; but in the midst of it
Marian Almond came pushing through the crowd, with a little ironical
cry, when she found these young people still together, which made
everyone turn round, and cost Catherine a conscious blush. Marian
broke up their talk, and told Mr. Townsend- whom she treated as if she
were already married, and he had become her cousin- to run away to her
mother, who had been wishing for the last half hour to introduce him
to Mr. Almond.

  "We shall meet again," he said to Catherine as he left her, and
Catherine thought it a very original speech.

  Her cousin took her by the arm, and made her walk about. "I
needn't ask you what you think of Morris," the young girl exclaimed.

  "Is that his name?"

  "I don't ask you what you think of his name, but what you think of
himself," said Marian.

  "Oh, nothing particular," Catherine answered, dissembling for the
first time in her life.

  "I have half a mind to tell him that!" cried Marian. "It will do him
good; he's so terribly conceited."

  "Conceited?" said Catherine, staring.

  "So Arthur says, and Arthur knows about him."

  "Oh, don't tell him!" Catherine murmured, imploringly.

  "Don't tell him he's conceited! I have told him so a dozen times."

  At this profession of audacity Catherine looked down at her little
companion in amazement. She supposed it was because Marian was going
to be married that she took so much on herself; but she wondered
too, whether, when she herself should become engaged, such exploits
would be expected of her.

  Half an hour later she saw her Aunt Penniman sitting in the
embrasure of a window, with her head a little on one side, and her
gold eyeglass raised to her eyes, which were wandering about the room.
In front of her was a gentleman, bending forward a little, with his
back turned to Catherine. She knew his back immediately, though she
had never seen it; for when he left her, at Marian's instigation, he
had retreated in the best order, without turning round. Morris
Townsend- the name had already become very familiar to her, as if
someone had been repeating it in her ear for the last half hour-
Morris Townsend was giving his impressions of the company to her aunt,
as he had done to herself; he was saying clever things, and Mrs.
Penniman was smiling, as if she approved of them. As soon as Catherine
had perceived this she moved away; she would not have liked him to
turn round and see her. But it gave her pleasure- the whole thing.
That he should talk with Mrs. Penniman, with whom she lived and whom
she saw and talked with every day- that seemed to keep him near her,
and to make him even easier to contemplate than if she herself had
been the object of his civilities; and that Aunt Lavinia should like
him, should not be shocked or startled by what he said, this also
appeared to the girl a personal gain; for Aunt Lavinia's standard
was extremely high, planted as it was over the grave of her late
husband, in which, as she had convinced everyone, the very genius of
conversation was buried. One of the Almond boys, as Catherine called
them, invited our heroine to dance a quadrille, and for a quarter of
an hour her feet at least were occupied. This time she was not
dizzy; her head was very clear. Just when the dance was over, she
found herself in the crowd face to face with her father. Doctor Sloper
had usually a little smile, never a very big one, and with this little
smile playing in his clear eyes and on his neatly shaved lips, he
looked at his daughter's crimson gown.

  "Is it possible that this magnificent person is my child?" he said.

  You would have surprised him if you had told him so, but it is a
literal fact that he almost never addressed his daughter save in the
ironical form. Whenever he addressed her he gave her pleasure; but she
had to cut her pleasure out of the pieces, as it were. There were
portions left over, light remnants and snippets of irony, which she
never knew what to do with, which seemed too delicate for her own use;
and yet Catherine, lamenting the limitations of her understanding,
felt that they were too valuable to waste, and had a belief that if
they passed over her head they yet contributed to the general sum of
human wisdom.

  "I am not magnificent," she said, mildly, wishing that she had put
on another dress.

  "You are sumptuous, opulent, expensive," her father rejoined. "You
look as if you had eighty thousand a year."

  "Well, so long as I haven't,-" said Catherine, illogically. Her
conception of her prospective wealth was as yet very indefinite.

  "So long as you haven't you shouldn't look as if you had. Have you
enjoyed your party!"

  Catherine hesitated a moment; and then, looking away, "I am rather
tired," she murmured. I have said that this entertainment was, the
beginning of something important for Catherine. For the second time in
her life she made an indirect answer; and the beginning of a period of
dissimulation is certainly a significant date. Catherine was not so
easily tired as that.

  Nevertheless, in the carriage, as they drove home, she was as
quiet as if fatigue had been her portion. Doctor Sloper's manner of
addressing his sister Lavinia had a good deal of resemblance to the
tone he had adopted toward Catherine.

  "Who was the young man that was making love to you?" he presently
asked.

  "Oh, my good brother!" murmured Mrs. Penniman, in deprecation.

  "He seemed uncommonly tender. Whenever I looked at you for half an
hour, he had the most devoted air."

  "The devotion was not to me," said Mrs. Penniman. "It was to
Catherine; he talked to me of her."

  Catherine had been listening with all her ears. "Oh, Aunt Penniman!"
she exclaimed, faintly.

  "He is very handsome; he is very clever; he expressed himself with a
great deal- a great deal of felicity," her aunt went on.

  "He is in love with this regal creature, then?" the doctor inquired,
humorously.

  "Oh, Father!" cried the girl, still more faintly, devoutly
thankful the carriage was dark.

  "I don't know that; but he admired her dress."

  Catherine did not say to herself in the dark, "My dress only?"
Mrs. Penniman's announcement struck her by its richness, not by its
meagerness.

  "You see," said her father, "he thinks you have eighty thousand a
year."

  "I don't believe he thinks of that," said Mrs. Penniman. "He is
too refined."

  "He must be tremendously refined not to think of that!"

  "Well, he is!" Catherine exclaimed, before she knew it.

  "I thought you had gone to sleep," her father answered. "The hour
has come!" he added to himself. "Lavinia is going to get up a
romance for Catherine. It's a shame to play such tricks on the girl.
What is the gentleman's name?" he went on, aloud.

  "I didn't catch it, and I didn't like to ask him. He asked to be
introduced to me," said Mrs. Penniman, with a certain grandeur, "but
you know how indistinctly Jefferson speaks." Jefferson was Mr. Almond.
"Catherine, dear, what was the gentleman's name?"

  For a minute, if it had not been for the rumbling of the carriage,
you might have heard a pin drop.

  "I don't know, Aunt Lavinia," said Catherine, very softly. And, with
all his irony, her father believed her.

                         CHAPTER 5.

  HE LEARNED what he had asked some three or four days later, after
Morris Townsend, with his cousin, had called in Washington Square.
Mrs. Penniman did not tell her brother, on the drive home, that she
had intimated to this agreeable young man, whose name she did not
know, that, with her niece, she should be very glad to see him; but
she was greatly pleased, and even a little flattered, when, late on
a Sunday afternoon, the two gentlemen made their appearance. His
coming with Arthur Townsend made it more natural and easy; the
latter young man was on the point of becoming connected with the
family, and Mrs. Penniman had remarked to Catherine that, as he was
going to marry Marian, it would be polite in him to call. These events
came to pass late in the autumn, and Catherine and her aunt had been
sitting together in the closing dusk, by the firelight, in the high
back parlor.

  Arthur Townsend fell to Catherine's portion, while his companion
placed himself on the sofa beside Mrs. Penniman. Catherine had
hitherto not been a harsh critic; she was easy to please- she liked to
talk with young men. But Marian's betrothed, this evening, made her
feel vaguely fastidious; he sat looking at the fire and rubbing his
knees with his hands. As for Catherine, she scarcely even pretended to
keep up the conversation; her attention had fixed itself on the
other side of the room; she was listening to what went on between
the other Mr. Townsend and her aunt. Every now and then he looked over
at Catherine herself and smiled, as if to show that what he said was
for her benefit too. Catherine would have liked to change her place,
to go and sit near them, where she might see and hear him better.
But she was afraid of seeming bold- of looking eager; and, besides, it
would not have been polite to Marian's little suitor. She wondered why
the other gentleman had picked out her aunt- how he came to have so
much to say to Mrs. Penniman, to whom, usually, young men were not
especially devoted. She was not at all jealous of Aunt Lavinia, but
she was a little envious, and, above all, she wondered; for Morris
Townsend was an object on which she found that her imagination could
exercise itself indefinitely. His cousin had been describing a house
that he had taken in view of his union with Marian, and the domestic
conveniences he meant to introduce into it; how Marian wanted a larger
one, and Mrs. Almond recommended a smaller one, and how he himself was
convinced that he had got the neatest house in New York.

  "It doesn't matter," he said. "It's only for three or four years. At
the end of three or four years we'll move. That's the way to live in
New York- to move every three or four years. Then you always get the
last thing. It's because the city's growing so quick- you've got to
keep up with it. It's going straight uptown- that's where New York's
going. If I wasn't afraid Marian would be lonely, I'd go up there-
right up to the top- and wait for it. Only have to wait ten years-
they'll all come up after you. But Marian says she wants some
neighbors- she doesn't want to be a pioneer. She says that if she's
got to be the first settler she had better go out to Minnesota. I
guess we'll move up little by little; when we get tired of one
street we'll go higher. So you see we'll always have a new house; it's
a great advantage to have a new house; you get all the latest
improvements. They invent everything all over again about every five
years, and it's a great thing to keep up with the new things. I always
try and keep up with the new things of every kind. Don't you think
that's a good motto for a young couple- to keep 'going higher'? What's
the name of that piece of poetry- what do they call it?- 'Excelsior!'"

  Catherine bestowed on her junior visitor only just enough
attention to feel that this was not the way Mr. Morris Townsend had
talked the other night, or that he was talking now to her fortunate
aunt. But suddenly his aspiring kinsman became more interesting. He
seemed to have become conscious that she was affected by his
companion's presence, and he thought it proper to explain it.

  "My cousin asked me to bring him, or I shouldn't have taken the
liberty. He seemed to want very much to come; you know he's awfully
sociable. I told him I wanted to ask you first, but he said Mrs.
Penniman had invited him. He isn't particular what he says when he
wants to come somewhere. But Mrs. Penniman seems to think it's all
right."

  "We are very glad to see him," said Catherine. And she wished to
talk more about him, but she hardly knew what to say. "I never saw him
before," she went on, presently.

  Arthur Townsend stared.

  "Why, he told me he talked with you for over half an hour the
other night."

  "I mean before the other night. That was the first time."

  "Oh, he has been away from New York- he has been all round the
world. He doesn't know many people here, but he's very sociable, and
he wants to know everyone."

  "Everyone?" said Catherine.

  "Well, I mean all the good ones. All the pretty young ladies- like
Mrs. Penniman!" And Arthur Townsend gave a private laugh.

  "My aunt likes him very much," said Catherine.

  "Most people like him- he's so brilliant."

  "He's more like a foreigner," Catherine suggested.

  "Well, I never knew a foreigner," said young Townsend, in a tone
which seemed to indicate that his ignorance had been optional.

  "Neither have I," Catherine confessed, with more humility. "They say
they are generally brilliant," she added, vaguely.

  "Well, the people of this city are clever enough for me. I know some
of them that think they are too clever for me; but they ain't."

  "I suppose you can't be too clever," said Catherine, still with
humility.

  "I don't know. I know some people that call my cousin too clever."

  Catherine listened to this statement with extreme interest, and a
feeling that if Morris Townsend had a fault it would naturally be that
one. But she did not commit herself, and in a moment she asked, "Now
that he has come back, will he stay here always?"

  "Ah," said Arthur, "if he can get something to do."

  "Something to do?"

  "Some place or other; some business."

  "Hasn't he got any?" said Catherine, who had never heard of a
young man- of the upper class- in this situation.

  "No, he's looking round. But he can't find anything."

  "I am very sorry," Catherine permitted herself to observe.

  "Oh, he doesn't mind," said young Townsend. "He takes it easy- he
isn't in a hurry. He is very particular."

  Catherine thought he naturally would be, and gave herself up for
some moments to the contemplation of this idea, in several of its
bearings.

  "Won't his father take him into his business- his office?" she at
last inquired.

  "He hasn't got any father- he has only got a sister. Your sister
can't help you much."

  It seemed to Catherine that if she were his sister she would
disprove this axiom. "If she- is she pleasant?" she asked in a moment.

  "I don't know- I believe she's very respectable," said young
Townsend. And then he looked across to his cousin and began to
laugh. "I say, we are talking about you," he added.

  Morris Townsend paused in his conversation with Mrs. Penniman, and
stared, with a little smile. Then he got up, as if he were going.

  "As far as you are concerned, I can't return the compliment," he
said to Catherine's companion. "But as regards Miss Sloper, it's
another affair."

  Catherine thought this little speech wonderfully well turned; but
she was embarrassed by it, and she also got up. Morris Townsend
stood looking at her and smiling; he put out his hand for farewell. He
was going, without having said anything to her; but even on these
terms she was glad to have seen him.

  "I will tell her what you have said- when you go!" said Mrs.
Penniman, with a little significant laugh.

  Catherine blushed, for she felt almost as if they were making
sport of her. What in the world could this beautiful young man have
said? He looked at her still, in spite of her blush, but very kindly
and respectfully.

  "I have had no talk with you," he said, "and that was what I came
for. But it will be a good reason for coming another time, a little
pretext- if I am obliged to give one. I am not afraid of what your
aunt will say when I go."

  With this the two young men took their departure; after which
Catherine, with her blush still lingering, directed a serious and
interrogative eye to Mrs. Penniman. She was incapable of elaborate
artifice, and she resorted to no jocular device- to no affectation
of the belief that she had been maligned- to learn what she desired.

  "What did you say you would tell me?" she asked.

  Mrs. Penniman came up to her, smiling and nodding a little, looked
at her all over, and gave a twist to the knot of ribbon in her neck.
"It's a great secret, my dear child, but he is coming a-courting!"

  Catherine was serious still. "Is that what he told you?"

  "He didn't say so exactly, but he left me to guess it. I'm a good
guesser."

  "Do you mean a-courting me?"

  "Not me, certainly, miss; though I must say he is a hundred times
more polite to a person who has no longer extreme youth to recommend
her than most of the young men. He is thinking of someone else." And
Mrs. Penniman gave her niece a delicate little kiss. "You must be very
gracious to him."

  Catherine stared- she was bewildered. "I don't understand you,"
she said. "He doesn't know me."

  "Oh yes, he does; more than you think. I have told him all about
you."

  "Oh, Aunt Penniman!" murmured Catherine, as if this had been a
breach of trust. "He is a perfect stranger- we don't know him."
There was infinite modesty in the poor girl's "we."

  Aunt Penniman, however, took no account of it; she spoke even with a
touch of acrimony. "My dear Catherine, you know very well that you
admire him."

  "Oh, Aunt Penniman!" Catherine could only murmur again. It might
very well be that she admired him- though this did not seem to her a
thing to talk about. But that this brilliant stranger- this sudden
apparition, who had barely heard the sound of her voice- took that
sort of interest in her that was expressed by the romantic phrase of
which Mrs. Penniman had just made use- this could only be a figment of
the restless brain of Aunt Lavinia, whom everyone knew to be a woman
of powerful imagination.

                         CHAPTER 6.

  MRS. PENNIMAN even took for granted at times that other people had
as much imagination as herself; so that when, half an hour later,
her brother came in, she addressed him quite on this principle.

  "He has just been here, Austin; it's such a pity you missed him."

  "Whom in the world have I missed?" asked the doctor.

  "Mr. Morris Townsend; he has made us such a delightful visit."

  "And who in the world is Mr. Morris Townsend?"

  "Aunt Penniman means the gentleman- the gentleman whose name I
couldn't remember," said Catherine.

  "The gentleman at Elizabeth's party who was so struck with
Catherine," Mrs. Penniman added.

  "Oh, his name is Morris Townsend, is it? And did he come here to
propose to you?"

  "Oh, Father!" murmured the girl for an answer, turning away to the
window, where the dusk had deepened to darkness.

  "I hope he won't do that without your permission," said Mrs.
Penniman, very graciously.

  "After all, my dear, he seems to have yours," her brother answered.

  Lavinia simpered, as if this might not be quite enough, and
Catherine, with her forehead touching the windowpanes, listened to
this exchange of epigrams as reservedly as if they had not each been a
pinprick in her own destiny.

  "The next time he comes," the doctor added, "you had better call me.
He might like to see me."

  Morris Townsend came again some five days afterward; but Doctor
Sloper was not called, as he was absent from home at the time.
Catherine was with her aunt when the young man's name was brought
in, and Mrs. Penniman, effacing herself and protesting, made a great
point of her niece's going into the drawing room alone.

  "This time it's for you- for you only," she said. "Before, when he
talked to me, it was only preliminary- it was to gain my confidence.
Literally, my dear, I should not have the courage to show myself
today."

  And this was perfectly true. Mrs. Penniman was not a brave woman,
and Morris Townsend had struck her as a young man of great force of
character, and of remarkable powers of satire- a keen, resolute,
brilliant nature, with which one must exercise a great deal of tact.
She said to herself that he was "imperious," and she liked the word
and the idea. She was not the least jealous of her niece, and she
had been perfectly happy with Mr. Penniman, but in the bottom of her
heart she permitted herself the observation, "That's the sort of
husband I should have had!" He was certainly much more imperious-
she ended by calling it imperial- than Mr. Penniman.

  So Catherine saw Mr. Townsend alone, and her aunt did not come in
even at the end of the visit. The visit was a long one; he sat
there, in the front parlor, in the biggest armchair, for more than
an hour. He seemed more at home this time- more familiar, lounging a
little in the chair, slapping a cushion that was near him with his
stick, and looking round the room a good deal, and at the objects it
contained, as well as at Catherine, whom, however, he also
contemplated freely. There was a smile of respectful devotion in his
handsome eyes which seemed to Catherine almost solemnly beautiful;
it made her think of a young knight in a poem. His talk, however,
was not particularly knightly; it was light and easy and friendly;
it took a practical turn, and he asked a number of questions about
herself- what were her tastes- if she liked this and that- what were
her habits. He said to her, with his charming smile, "Tell me about
yourself; give me a little sketch." Catherine had very little to tell,
and she had no talent for sketching; but before he went she had
confided to him that she had a secret passion for the theater, which
had been but scantily gratified, and a taste for operatic music-
that of Bellini and Donizetti, in especial (it must be remembered,
in extenuation of this primitive young woman, that she held these
opinions in an age of general darkness)- which she rarely had an
occasion to hear, except on the hand organ. She confessed that she was
not particularly fond of literature. Morris Townsend agreed with her
that books were tiresome things; only, as he said, you had to read a
good many before you found it out. He had been to places that people
had written books about, and they were not a bit like the
descriptions. To see for yourself- that was the great thing; he always
tried to see for himself. He had seen all the principal actors- he had
been to all the best theaters in London and Paris. But the actors were
always like the authors- they always exaggerated. He liked
everything to be natural. Suddenly he stopped, looking at Catherine
with his smile.

  "That's what I like you for; you are so natural. Excuse me," he
added, "you see I am natural myself."

  And before she had time to think whether she excused him or not-
which afterward, at leisure, she became conscious that she did- he
began to talk about music, and to say that it was his greatest
pleasure in life. He had heard all the great singers in Paris and
London- Pasta and Rubini and Lablache- and when you had done that, you
could say that you knew what singing was.

  "I sing a little myself," he said. "Someday I will show you. Not
today, but some other time."

  And then he got up to go. He had omitted, by accident, to say that
he would sing to her if she would play to him. He thought of this
after he got into the street; but he might have spared his
compunction, for Catherine had not noticed the lapse. She was thinking
only that "some other time" had a delightful sound; it seemed to
spread itself over the future.

  This was all the more reason, however, though she was ashamed and
uncomfortable, why she should tell her father that Mr. Townsend had
called again. She announced the fact abruptly, almost violently, as
soon as the doctor came into the house; and having done so- it was her
duty- she took measures to leave the room. But she could not leave
it fast enough; her father stopped her just as she reached the door.

  "Well, my dear, did he propose to you today?" the doctor asked.

  This was just what she had been afraid he would say; and yet she had
no answer ready. Of course she would have liked to take it as a
joke- as her father must have meant it; and yet she would have liked
also, in denying it, to be a little positive, a little sharp, so
that he would perhaps not ask the question again. She didn't like
it- it made her unhappy. But Catherine could never be sharp; and for a
moment she only stood, with her hand on the doorknob, looking at her
satiric parent, and giving a little laugh.

  "Decidedly," said the doctor to himself, "my daughter is not
brilliant!"

  But he had no sooner made this reflection than Catherine found
something; she had decided, on the whole, to take the thing as a joke.

  "Perhaps he will do it the next time," she exclaimed, with a
repetition of her laugh; and she quickly got out of the room.

  The doctor stood staring; he wondered whether his daughter were
serious. Catherine went straight to her own room, and by the time
she reached it she bethought herself that there was something else-
something better- she might have said. She almost wished, now, that
her father would ask his question again, so that she might reply,
"Oh yes, Mr. Morris Townsend proposed to me, and I refused him."

  The doctor, however, began to put his questions elsewhere; it
naturally having occurred to him that he ought to inform himself
properly about this handsome young man, who had formed the habit of
running in and out of his house. He addressed himself to the elder
of his sisters, Mrs. Almond- not going to her for the purpose; there
was no such hurry as that; but having made a note of the matter for
the first opportunity. The doctor was never eager, never impatient
or nervous; but he made notes of everything, and he regularly
consulted his notes. Among them the information he obtained from
Mrs. Almond about Morris Townsend took its place.

  "Lavinia has already been to ask me," she said. "Lavinia is most
excited; I don't understand it. It's not, after all, Lavinia that
the young man is supposed to have designs upon. She is very peculiar."

  "Ah, my dear," the doctor replied, "she has not lived with me
these twelve years without my finding it out."

  "She has got such an artificial mind," said Mrs. Almond, who
always enjoyed an opportunity to discuss Lavinia's peculiarities
with her brother. "She didn't want me to tell you that she had asked
me about Mr. Townsend; but I told her I would. She always wants to
conceal everything."

  "And yet at moments no one blurts things out with such crudity.
She is like a revolving lighthouse- pitch darkness alternating with
a dazzling brilliancy! But what did you tell her?" the doctor asked.

  "What I tell you- that I know very little of him."

  "Lavinia must have been disappointed at that," said the doctor. "She
would prefer him to have been guilty of some romantic crime.
However, we must make the best of people. They tell me our gentleman
is the cousin of the little boy to whom you are about to entrust the
future of your little girl."

  "Arthur is not a little boy; he is a very old man; you and I will
never be so old! He is a distant relation of Lavinia's protege. The
name is the same, but I am given to understand that there are
Townsends and Townsends. So Arthur's mother tells me; she talked about
'branches'- younger branches, elder branches, inferior branches- as if
it were a royal house. Arthur, it appears, is of the reigning line,
but poor Lavinia's young man is not. Beyond this, Arthur's mother
knows very little about him; she has only a vague story that he has
been 'wild.' But I know his sister a little, and she is a very nice
woman. Her name is Mrs. Montgomery; she is a widow, with a little
property and five children. She lives in the Second Avenue."

  "What does Mrs. Montgomery say about him?"

  "That he has talents by which he might distinguish himself."

  "Only he is lazy, eh?"

  "She doesn't say so."

  "That's family pride," said the doctor. "What is his profession?"

  "He hasn't got any; he is looking for something. I believe he was
once in the navy."

  "Once? What is his age?"

  "I suppose he is upward of thirty. He must have gone into the navy
very young. I think Arthur told me that he inherited a small property-
which was perhaps the cause of his leaving the navy- and that he spent
it all in a few years. He traveled all over the world, lived abroad,
amused himself. I believe it was a kind of system, a theory he had. He
has lately come back to America with the intention, as he tells
Arthur, of beginning life in earnest."

  "Is he in earnest about Catherine, then?"

  "I don't see why you should be incredulous," said Mrs. Almond. "It
seems to me that you have never done Catherine justice. You must
remember that she has the prospect of thirty thousand a year."

  The doctor looked at his sister a moment, and then, with lightest
touch of bitterness, "You at least appreciate her," he said.

  Mrs. Almond blushed.

  "I don't mean that is her only merit; I simply mean that it is a
great one. A great many young men think so; and you appear to me never
to have been properly aware of that. You have always had a little
way of alluding to her as an unmarriageable girl."

  "My allusions are as kind as yours, Elizabeth," said the doctor,
frankly. "How many suitors has Catherine had, with all her
expectations- how much attention has she ever received? Catherine is
not unmarriageable, but she is absolutely unattractive. What other
reason is there for Lavinia being so charmed with the idea that
there is a lover in the house? There has never been one before, and
Lavinia, with her sensitive, sympathetic nature, is not used to the
idea. It affects her imagination. I must do the young men of New
York the justice to say that they strike me as very disinterested.
They prefer pretty girls- lively girls- girls like your own. Catherine
is neither pretty nor lively."

  "Catherine does very well; she has a style of her own- which is more
than my poor Marian has, who has no style at all," said Mrs. Almond.
"The reason Catherine has received so little attention, is that she
seems to all the young men to be older than themselves. She is so
large, and she dresses so richly. They are rather afraid of her, I
think; she looks as if she had been married already, and you know they
don't like married women. And if our young men appear
disinterested," the doctor's wiser sister went on, "it is because they
marry, as a general thing, so young- before twenty-five, at the age of
innocence and sincerity- before the age of calculation. If they only
waited a little, Catherine would fare better."

  "As a calculation? Thank you very much," said the doctor.

  "Wait till some intelligent man of forty comes along, and he will be
delighted with Catherine," Mrs. Almond continued.

  "Mr. Townsend is not old enough, then? His motives may be pure."

  "It is very possible that his motives are pure; I should be very
sorry to take the contrary for granted. Lavinia is sure of it; and, as
he is a very prepossessing youth, you might give him the benefit of
the doubt."

  Doctor Sloper reflected a moment.

  "What are his present means of subsistence?"

  "I have no idea. He lives, as I say, with his sister."

  "A widow, with five children? Do you mean he lives upon her?"

  Mrs. Almond got up, and with a certain impatience, "Had you not
better ask Mrs. Montgomery herself?" she inquired.

  "Perhaps I may come to that," said the doctor. "Did you say the
Second Avenue?" He made a note of the Second Avenue.

                         CHAPTER 7.

  HE WAS, however, by no means so much in earnest as this might seem
to indicate; and, indeed, he was more than anything else amused with
the whole situation. He was not in the least in a state of tension
or of vigilance with regard to Catherine's prospects; he was even on
his guard against the ridicule that might attach itself to the
spectacle of a house thrown into agitation by its daughter and heiress
receiving attentions unprecedented in its annals. More than this, he
went so far as to promise himself some entertainment from the little
drama- if drama it was- of which Mrs. Penniman desired to represent
the ingenious Mr. Townsend as the hero. He had no intention, as yet,
of regulating the denouement. He was perfectly willing, as Elizabeth
had suggested, to give the young man the benefit of every doubt. There
was no great danger in it; for Catherine, at the age of twenty-two,
was, after all, a rather mature blossom, such as could be plucked from
the stem only by a vigorous jerk. The fact that Morris Townsend was
poor, was not of necessity against him; the doctor had never made up
his mind that his daughter should marry a rich man. The fortune she
would inherit struck him as a very sufficient provision for two
reasonable persons, and if a penniless swain who could give a good
account of himself should enter the lists, he should be judged quite
upon his personal merits. There were other things besides. The
doctor thought it very vulgar to be precipitate in accusing people
of mercenary motives, inasmuch as his door had as yet not been in
the least besieged by fortune hunters; and, lastly, he was very
curious to see whether Catherine might really be loved for her moral
worth. He smiled as he reflected that poor Mr. Townsend had been
only twice to the house, and he said to Mrs. Penniman that the next
time he should come she must ask him to dinner.

  He came very soon again, and Mrs. Penniman had of course great
pleasure in executing this mission. Morris Townsend accepted her
invitation with equal good grace, and the dinner took place a few days
later. The doctor had said to himself, justly enough, that they must
not have the young man alone; this would partake too much of the
nature of encouragement. So two or three other persons were invited;
but Morris Townsend, though he was by no means the ostensible, was the
real occasion of the feast. There is every reason to suppose that he
desired to make a good impression; and if he fell short of this
result, it was not for want of a good deal of intelligent effort.
The doctor talked to him very little during dinner; but he observed
him attentively, and after the ladies had gone out he pushed him the
wine and asked him several questions. Morris was not a young man who
needed to be pressed, and he found quite enough encouragement in the
superior quality of the claret. The doctor's wine was admirable, and
it may be communicated to the reader that while he sipped it Morris
reflected that a cellarful of good liquor- there was evidently a
cellarful here- would be a most attractive idiosyncrasy in a
father-in-law. The doctor was struck with his appreciative guest; he
saw that he was not a commonplace young man. "He has ability," said
Catherine's father, "decided ability; he has a very good head if he
chooses to use it. And he is uncommonly well turned out; quite the
sort of figure that pleases the ladies; but I don't think I like him."
The doctor, however, kept his reflections to himself, and talked to
his visitor about foreign lands, concerning which Morris offered him
more information than he was ready, as he mentally phrased it, to
swallow. Doctor Sloper had traveled but little, and he took the
liberty of not believing everything that his talkative guest narrated.
He prided himself on being something of a physiognomist; and while the
young man, chatting with easy assurance, puffed his cigar and filled
his glass again, the doctor sat with his eyes quietly fixed on his
bright, expressive face. "He has the assurance of the devil
himself!" said Morris's host. "I don't think I ever saw such
assurance. And his powers of invention are most remarkable. He is very
knowing; they were not so knowing as that in my time. And a good head,
did I say? I should think so- after a bottle of Madeira, and a
bottle and a half of claret!"

  After dinner Morris Townsend went and stood before Catherine, who
was standing before the fire in her red satin gown.

  "He doesn't like me- he doesn't like me at all," said the young man.

  "Who doesn't like you?" asked Catherine.

  "Your father; extraordinary man!"

  "I don't see how you know," said Catherine, blushing.

  "I feel; I am very quick to feel."

  "Perhaps you are mistaken."

  "Ah, well, you ask him, and you will see."

  "I would rather not ask him, if there is any danger of his saying
what you think."

  Morris looked at her with an air of mock melancholy.

  "It wouldn't give you any pleasure to contradict him?"

  "I never contradict him," said Catherine.

  "Will you hear me abused without opening your lips in my defense?"

  "My father won't abuse you. He doesn't know you enough."

  Morris Townsend gave a loud laugh, and Catherine began to blush
again.

  "I shall never mention you," she said, to take refuge from her
confusion.

  "That is very well, but it is not quite what I should have liked you
to say. I should have liked you to say, 'If my father doesn't think
well of you, what does it matter?'"

  "Ah, but it would matter; I couldn't say that!" the girl exclaimed.

  He looked at her for a moment, smiling a little; and the doctor,
if he had been watching him just then, would have seen a gleam of fine
impatience in the sociable softness of his eye. But there was no
impatience in his rejoinder- none, at least, save what was expressed
in a little appealing sigh. "Ah, well, then I must not give up the
hope of bringing him round."

  He expressed it more frankly to Mrs. Penniman later in the
evening. But before that he sang two or three songs at Catherine's
timid request; not that he flattered himself that this would help to
bring her father round. He had a sweet light tenor voice, and, when he
had finished, everyone made some exclamation- everyone, that is,
save Catherine, who remained intensely silent. Mrs. Penniman
declared that his manner of singing was "most artistic," and Doctor
Sloper said it was "very taking- very taking, indeed," speaking loudly
and distinctly, but with a certain dryness.

  "He doesn't like me- he doesn't like me at all," said Morris
Townsend, addressing the aunt in the same manner as he had done the
niece. "He thinks I am all wrong."

  Unlike her niece, Mrs. Penniman asked for no explanation. She only
smiled very sweetly, as if she understood everything; and, unlike
Catherine too, she made no attempt to contradict him. "Pray, what does
it matter?" she murmured, softly.

  "Ah, you say the right thing!" said Morris, greatly to the
gratification of Mrs. Penniman, who prided herself on always saying
the right thing.

  The doctor, the next time he saw his sister Elizabeth, let her
know that he had made the acquaintance of Lavinia's protege.

  "Physically," he said, "he's uncommonly well set up. As an
anatomist, it is really a pleasure to me to see such a beautiful
structure; although, if people were all like him, I suppose there
would be very little need for doctors."

  "Don't you see anything in people but their bones?" Mrs. Almond
rejoined. "What do you think of him as a father?"

  "As a father? Thank heaven, I am not his father!"

  "No; but you are Catherine's. Lavinia tells me she is in love."

  "She must get over it. He is not a gentleman."

  "Ah, take care! Remember that he is a branch of the Townsends."

  "He is not what I call a gentleman; he has not the soul of one. He
is extremely insinuating; but it's a vulgar nature. I saw through it
in a minute. He is altogether too familiar- I hate familiarity. He
is a plausible coxcomb."

  "Ah, well," said Mrs. Almond, "if you make up your mind so easily,
it's a great advantage."

  "I don't make up my mind easily. What I tell you is the result of
thirty years of observation; and in order to be able to form that
judgment in a single evening, I have had to spend a lifetime in
study."

  "Very possibly you are right. But the thing is for Catherine to
see it."

  "I will present her with a pair of spectacles!" said the doctor.

                         CHAPTER 8.

  IF IT WERE TRUE that she was in love, she was certainly very quiet
about it; but the doctor was of course prepared to admit that her
quietness might mean volumes. She had told Morris Townsend that she
would not mention him to her father, and she saw no reason to
retract this vow of discretion. It was no more than decently civil, of
course, that, after having dined in Washington Square, Morris should
call there again; and it was no more than natural that, having been
kindly received on this occasion, he should continue to present
himself. He had had plenty of leisure on his hands; and thirty years
ago, in New York, a young man of leisure had reason to be thankful for
aids to self-oblivion. Catherine said nothing to her father about
these visits, though they had rapidly become the most important, the
most absorbing thing in her life. The girl was happy. She knew not
as yet what would come of it; but the present had suddenly grown
rich and solemn. If she had been told she was in love, she would
have been a good deal surprised; for she had an idea that love was
an eager and exacting passion, and her own heart was filled in these
days with the impulse of self-effacement and sacrifice. Whenever
Morris Townsend had left the house, her imagination projected
itself, with all its strength, into the idea of his soon coming
back; but if she had been told at such a moment that he would not
return for a year, or even that he would never return, she would not
have complained nor rebelled, but would have humbly accepted the
decree, and sought for consolation in thinking over the times she
had already seen him, the words he had spoken, the sound of his voice,
of his tread, the expression of his face. Love demands certain
things as a right; but Catherine had no sense of her rights; she had
only a consciousness of immense and unexpected favors. Her very
gratitude for these things had hushed itself; for it seemed to her
that there would be something of impudence in making a festival of her
secret. Her father suspected Morris Townsend's visits, and noted her
reserve. She seemed to beg pardon for it; she looked at him constantly
in silence, as if she meant to say that she said nothing because she
was afraid of irritating him. But the poor girl's dumb eloquence
irritated him more than anything else would have done, and he caught
himself murmuring more than once that it was a grievous pity his
only child was a simpleton. His murmurs, however, were inaudible;
and for awhile he said nothing to anyone. He would have liked to
know exactly how often young Townsend came; but he had determined to
ask no questions of the girl herself- to say nothing more to her
that would show that he watched her. The doctor had a great idea of
being largely just: He wished to leave his daughter her liberty, and
interfere only when the danger should be proved. It was not in his
manner to obtain information by indirect methods, and it never even
occurred to him to question the servants. As for Lavinia, he hated
to talk to her about the matter; she annoyed him with her mock
romanticism. But he had to come to this. Mrs. Penniman's convictions
as regards the relations of her niece and the clever young visitor,
who saved appearances by coming ostensibly for both the ladies- Mrs.
Penniman's convictions had passed into a riper and richer phase. There
was to be no crudity in Mrs. Penniman's treatment of the situation;
she had become as uncommunicative as Catherine herself. She was
tasting of the sweets of concealment; she had taken up the line of
mystery. "She would be enchanted to be able to prove to herself that
she is persecuted," said the doctor; and when at last he questioned
her, he was sure she would contrive to extract from his words a
pretext for this belief.

  "Be so good as to let me know what is going on in the house," he
said to her, in a tone which, under the circumstances, he himself
deemed genial.

  "Going on, Austin?" Mrs. Penniman exclaimed. "Why, I am sure I don't
know. I believe that last night the old gray cat had kittens."

  "At her age?" said the doctor. "The idea is startling- almost
shocking. Be so good as to see that they are all drowned. But what
else has happened?"

  "Ah, the dear little kittens!" cried Mrs. Penniman. "I wouldn't have
them drowned for the world!"

  Her brother puffed his cigar a few moments in silence. "Your
sympathy with kittens, Lavinia," he presently resumed, "arises from
a feline element in your own character."

  "Cats are very graceful, and very clean," said Mrs. Penniman,
smiling.

  "And very stealthy. You are the embodiment both of grace and of
neatness; but you are wanting in frankness."

  "You certainly are not, dear brother."

  "I don't pretend to be graceful, though I try to be neat. Why
haven't you let me know that Mr. Morris Townsend is coming to the
house four times a week?"

  Mrs. Penniman lifted her eyebrows. "Four times a week!"

  "Three times, then, or five times, if you prefer it. I am away all
day, and I see nothing. But when such things happen, you should let me
know."

  Mrs. Penniman, with her eyebrows still raised, reflected intently.
"Dear Austin," she said at last, "I am incapable of betraying a
confidence. I would rather suffer anything."

  "Never fear; you shall not suffer. To whose confidence is it you
allude? Has Catherine made you take a vow of eternal secrecy?"

  "By no means. Catherine has not told me as much as she might. She
has not been very trustful."

  "It is the young man, then, who has made you his confidant? Allow me
to say that it is extremely indiscreet of you to form secret alliances
with young men; you don't know where they may lead you."

  "I don't know what you mean by an alliance," said Mrs. Penniman.
"I take a great interest in Mr. Townsend; I won't conceal that. But
that's all."

  "Under the circumstances, that is quite enough. What is the source
of your interest in Mr. Townsend?"

  "Why," said Mrs. Penniman, musing, and then breaking into her smile,
"that he is so interesting!"

  The doctor felt that he had need of his patience. "And what makes
him interesting? His good looks?"

  "His misfortunes, Austin."

  "Ah, he has had misfortunes? That, of course, is always interesting.
Are you at liberty to mention a few of Mr. Townsend's?"

  "I don't know that he would like it," said Mrs. Penniman. "He has
told me a great deal about himself- he has told me, in fact, his whole
history. But I don't think I ought to repeat those things. He would
tell them to you, I am sure, if he thought you would listen to him
kindly. With kindness you may do anything with him."

  The doctor gave a laugh. "I shall request him very kindly, then,
to leave Catherine alone."

  "Ah!" said Mrs. Penniman, shaking her forefinger at her brother,
with her little finger turned out, "Catherine has probably said
something to him kinder than that!"

  "Said that she loved him? Do you mean that?"

  Mrs. Penniman fixed her eyes on the floor. "As I tell you, Austin,
she doesn't confide in me."

  "You have an opinion, I suppose, all the same. It is that I ask
you for; though I don't conceal from you that I shall not regard it as
conclusive."

  Mrs. Penniman's gaze continued to rest on the carpet; but at last
she lifted it, and then her brother thought it very expressive. "I
think Catherine is very happy; that is all I can say."

  "Townsend is trying to marry her- is that what you mean?"

  "He is greatly interested in her."

  "He finds her such an attractive girl?"

  "Catherine has a lovely nature, Austin," said Mrs. Penniman, "and
Mr. Townsend has had the intelligence to discover that."

  "With a little help from you, I suppose. My dear Lavinia," cried the
doctor, "you are an admirable aunt!"

  "So Mr. Townsend says," observed Lavinia, smiling.

  "Do you think he is sincere?" asked her brother.

  "In saying that?"

  "No; that's of course. But in his admiration for Catherine?"

  "Deeply sincere. He has said to me the most appreciative, the most
charming things about her. He would say them to you, if he were sure
you would listen to him- gently."

  "I doubt whether I can undertake it. He appears to require a great
deal of gentleness."

  "He is a sympathetic, sensitive nature," said Mrs. Penniman.

  Her brother puffed his cigar again in silence. "These delicate
qualities have survived his vicissitudes, eh? All this while you
haven't told me about his misfortunes."

  "It is a long story," said Mrs. Penniman, "and I regard it as a
sacred trust. But I suppose there is no objection to my saying that he
has been wild- he frankly confesses that. But he has paid for it."

  "That's what has impoverished him, eh?"

  "I don't mean simply in money. He is very much alone in the world."

  "Do you mean that he has behaved so badly that his friends have
given him up?"

  "He has had false friends, who have deceived and betrayed him."

  "He seems to have some good ones too. He has a devoted sister, and
half a dozen nephews and nieces."

  Mrs. Penniman was silent a minute. "The nephews and nieces are
children, and the sister is not a very attractive person."

  "I hope he doesn't abuse her to you," said the doctor, "for I am
told he lives upon her."

  "Lives upon her?"

  "Lives with her, and does nothing for himself; it is about the
same thing."

  "He is looking for a position most earnestly," said Mrs. Penniman.
"He hopes every day to find one."

  "Precisely. He is looking for it here- over there in the front
parlor. The position of husband of a weak-minded woman with a large
fortune would suit him to perfection!"

  Mrs. Penniman was truly amiable, but she now gave signs of temper.
She rose with much animation, and stood for a moment looking at her
brother. "My dear Austin," she remarked, "if you regard Catherine as a
weak-minded woman you are particularly mistaken!" And with this she
moved majestically away.

                         CHAPTER 9.

  IT WAS a regular custom with the family in Washington Square to go
and spend Sunday evening at Mrs. Almond's. On the Sunday after the
conversation I have just narrated this custom was not intermitted; and
on this occasion, toward the middle of the evening, Doctor Sloper
found reason to withdraw to the library with his brother-in-law, to
talk over a matter of business. He was absent some twenty minutes, and
when he came back into the circle, which was enlivened by the presence
of several friends of the family, he saw that Morris Townsend had come
in, and had lost as little time as possible in seating himself on a
small sofa beside Catherine. In the large room, where several
different groups had been formed, and the hum of voices and of
laughter was loud, these two young persons might confabulate, as the
doctor phrased it to himself, without attracting attention. He saw
in a moment, however, that his daughter was painfully conscious of his
own observation. She sat motionless, with her eyes bent down,
staring at her open fan, deeply flushed, shrinking together as if to
minimize the indiscretion of which she confessed herself guilty.

  The doctor almost pitied her. Poor Catherine was not defiant; she
had no genius for bravado, and as she felt that her father viewed
her companion's attentions with an unsympathizing eye, there was
nothing but discomfort for her in the accident of seeming to challenge
him. The doctor felt, indeed, so sorry for her that he turned away, to
spare her the sense of being watched; and he was so intelligent a
man that, in his thoughts, he rendered a sort of poetic justice to her
situation.

  "It must be deucedly pleasant for a plain, inanimate girl like
that to have a beautiful young fellow come and sit down beside her,
and whisper to her that he is her slave- if that is what this one
whispers. No wonder she likes it, and that she thinks me a cruel
tyrant, which of course she does, though she is afraid- she hasn't the
animation necessary- to admit it to herself. Poor old Catherine!"
mused the doctor, "I verily believe she is capable of defending me
when Townsend abuses me!"

  And the force of this reflection, for the moment, was such in making
him feel the natural opposition between his point of view and that
of an infatuated child, that he said to himself that he was perhaps
after all taking things too hard, and crying out before he was hurt.
He must not condemn Morris Townsend unheard. He had a great aversion
to taking things too hard; he thought that half the discomfort and
many of the disappointments of life come from it; and for an instant
he asked himself whether, possibly, he did not appear ridiculous to
this intelligent young man, whose private perception of
incongruities he suspected of being keen. At the end of a quarter of
an hour Catherine had got rid of him, and Townsend was now standing
before the fireplace in conversation with Mrs. Almond.

  "We will try him again," said the doctor. And he crossed the room
and joined his sister and her companion, making her a sign that she
should leave the young man to him. She presently did so, while
Morris looked at him, smiling, without a sign of evasiveness in his
affable eye.

  "He's amazingly conceited!" thought the doctor; and then he said,
aloud, "I am told you are looking out for a position."

  "Oh, a position is more than I should presume to call it," Morris
Townsend answered. "That sounds so fine. I should like some quiet
work- something to turn an honest penny."

  "What sort of thing should you prefer?"

  "Do you mean what am I fit for? Very little, I am afraid. I have
nothing but my good right arm, as they say in the melodramas."

  "You are too modest," said the doctor. "In addition to your good
right arm you have your subtle brain. I know nothing of you but what I
see; but I see by your physiognomy that you are extremely
intelligent."

  "Ah," Townsend murmured, "I don't know what to answer when you say
that. You advise me, then, not to despair?"

  And he looked at his interlocutor as if the question might have a
double meaning. The doctor caught the look and weighed it a moment
before he replied. "I should be very sorry to admit that a robust
and well-disposed young man need ever despair. If he doesn't succeed
in one thing, he can try another. Only, I should add, he should choose
his line with discretion."

  "Ah, yes, with discretion," Morris Townsend repeated,
sympathetically. "Well, I have been indiscreet, formerly; but I
think I have got over it. I am very steady now." And he stood a
moment, looking down at his remarkably neat shoes. Then at last, "Were
you kindly intending to propose something for my advantage?" he
inquired, looking up and smiling.
moment he reflected that he himself had, after all, touched first upon
this delicate point, and that his words might have been construed as
an offer of assistance. "I have no particular proposal to make," he
presently said, "but it occurred to me to let you know that I have you
in my mind. Sometimes one hears of opportunities. For instance, should
you object to leaving New York- to going to a distance?"

  "I am afraid I shouldn't be able to manage that. I must seek my
fortune here or nowhere. You see," added Morris Townsend, "I have
ties- I have responsibilities here. I have a sister, a widow, from
whom I have been separated for a long time, and to whom I am almost
everything. I shouldn't like to say to her that I must leave her.
She rather depends upon me, you see."

  "Ah, that's very proper; family feeling is very proper," said Doctor
Sloper. "I often think there is not enough of it in our city. I
think I have heard of your sister."

  "It is possible, but I rather doubt it; she lives so very quietly."

  "As quietly, you mean," the doctor went on, with a short laugh,
"as a lady may do who has several young children."

  "Ah, my little nephews and nieces- that's the very point! I am
helping to bring them up," said Morris Townsend. "I am a kind of
amateur tutor; I give them lessons."

  "That's very proper, as I say; but it is hardly a career."

  "It won't make my fortune," the young man confessed.

  "You must not be too much bent on a fortune," said the doctor.
"But I assure you I will keep you in mind; I won't lose sight of you."

  "If my situation becomes desperate I shall perhaps take the
liberty of reminding you," Morris rejoined, raising his voice a
little, with a brighter smile, as his interlocutor turned away.

  Before he left the house the doctor had a few words with Mrs.
Almond.

  "I should like to see his sister," he said. "What do you call her-
Mrs. Montgomery? I should like to have a little talk with her."

  "I will try and manage it," Mrs. Almond responded. "I will take
the first opportunity of inviting her, and you shall come and meet
her; unless, indeed," Mrs. Almond added, "She first takes it into
her head to be sick and to send for you."

  "Ah no, not that; she must have trouble enough without that. But
it would have its advantages, for then I should see the children. I
should like very much to see the children."

  "You are very thorough. Do you want to catechize them about their
uncle?"

  "Precisely. Their uncle tells me he has charge of their education,
that he saves their mother the expense of school bills. I should
like to ask them a few questions in the commoner branches."

  "He certainly has not the cut of a schoolmaster," Mrs. Almond said
to herself a short time afterward, as she saw Morris Townsend in a
corner bending over her niece, who was seated.

  And there was, indeed, nothing in the young man's discourse at
this moment that savored of the pedagogue.

  "Will you meet me somewhere tomorrow or next day?" he said, in a low
tone, to Catherine.

  "Meet you?" she asked, lifting her frightened eyes.

  "I have something particular to say to you- very particular."

  "Can't you come to the house? Can't you say it there?"

  Townsend shook his head gloomily. "I can't enter your doors again."

  "Oh, Mr. Townsend!" murmured Catherine. She trembled as she wondered
what had happened- whether her father had forbidden it.

  "I can't, in self-respect," said the young man. "Your father has
insulted me."

  "Insulted you!"

  "He has taunted me with my poverty."

  "Oh, you are mistaken- you misunderstood him!" Catherine spoke
with energy, getting up from her chair.

  "Perhaps I am too proud- too sensitive. But would you have me
otherwise?" he asked, tenderly.

  "Where my father is concerned, you must not be sure. He is full of
goodness," said Catherine.

  "He laughed at me for having no position. I took it quietly; but
only because he belongs to you."

  "I don't know," said Catherine, "I don't know what he thinks. I am
sure he means to be kind. You must not be too proud."

  "I will be proud only of you," Morris answered. "Will you meet me in
the Square in the afternoon?"

  A great blush on Catherine's part had been the answer to the
declaration I have just quoted. She turned away, heedless of his
question.

  "Will you meet me?" he repeated. "It is very quiet there- no one
need see us- toward dusk."

  "It is you who are unkind, it is you who laugh, when you say such
things as that."

  "My dear girl!" the young man murmured.

  "You know how little there is in me to be proud of. I am ugly and
stupid."

  Morris greeted this remark with an ardent murmur, in which she
recognized nothing articulate but an assurance that she was his own
dearest.

  But she went on. "I am not even- I am not even-" And she paused a
moment.

  "You are not what?"

  "I am not even brave."

  "Ah, then, if you are afraid, what shall we do?"

  She hesitated awhile; then at last, "You must come to the house,"
she said. "I am not afraid of that."

  "I would rather it were in the Square," the young man urged. "You
know how empty it is, often. No one will see us."

  "I don't care who sees us. But leave me now."

  He left her resignedly; he had got what he wanted. Fortunately he
was ignorant that half an hour later, going home with her father,
and feeling him near, the poor girl, in spite of her sudden
declaration of courage, began to tremble again. Her father said
nothing; but she had an idea his eyes were fixed upon her in the
darkness. Mrs. Penniman also was silent; Morris Townsend had told
her that her niece preferred, unromantically, an interview in a
chintz-covered parlor to a sentimental tryst beside a fountain sheeted
with dead leaves, and she was lost in wonderment at the oddity- almost
the perversity- of the choice.

                        CHAPTER 10.

  CATHERINE received the young man the next day on the ground she
had chosen- amidst the chaste upholstery of a New York drawing room
furnished in the fashion of fifty years ago. Morris had swallowed
his pride, and made the effort necessary to cross the threshold of her
too derisive parent- an act of magnanimity which could not fail to
render him doubly interesting.

  "We must settle something- we must take a line," he declared,
passing his hand through his hair and giving a glance at the long,
narrow mirror which adorned the space between the two windows, and
which had at its base a little gilded bracket covered by a thin slab
of white marble, supporting in its turn a backgammon board folded
together in the shape of two volumes- two shining folios inscribed, in
greenish-gilt letters, History of England. If Morris had been
pleased to describe the master of the house as a heartless scoffer, it
is because he thought him too much on his guard, and this was the
easiest way to express his own dissatisfaction- a dissatisfaction
which he had made a point of concealing from the doctor. It will
probably seem to the reader, however, that the doctor's vigilance
was by no means excessive, and that these two young people had an open
field. Their intimacy was now considerable, and it may appear that,
for a shrinking and retiring person, our heroine had been liberal of
her favors. The young man, within a few days, had made her listen to
things for which she had not supposed that she was prepared; having
a lively foreboding of difficulties, he proceeded to gain as much
ground as possible in the present. He remembered that fortune favors
the brave, and even if he had forgotten it, Mrs. Penniman would have
remembered it for him. Mrs. Penniman delighted of all things in a
drama, and she flattered herself that a drama would now be enacted.
Combining as she did the zeal of the prompter with the impatience of
the spectator, she had long since done her utmost to pull up the
curtain. She, too, expected to figure in the performance- to be the
confidante, the chorus, to speak the epilogue. It may even be said
that there were times when she lost sight altogether of the modest
heroine of the play in the contemplation of certain great scenes which
would naturally occur between the hero and herself.

  What Morris had told Catherine at last was simply that he loved her,
or rather adored her. Virtually, he had made known as much already-
his visits had been a series of eloquent intimations of it. But now he
had affirmed it in lover's vows, and, as a memorable sign of it, he
had passed his arm round the girl's waist and taken a kiss. This happy
certitude had come sooner than Catherine expected, and she had
regarded it, very naturally, as a priceless treasure. It may even be
doubted whether she had ever definitely expected to possess it; she
had not been waiting for it, and she had never said to herself that at
a given moment it must come. As I have tried to explain, she was not
eager and exacting; she took what was given her from day to day; and
if the delightful custom of her lover's visits, which yielded her a
happiness in which confidence and timidity were strangely blended, had
suddenly come to an end, she would not only not have spoken of herself
as one of the forsaken, but she would not have thought of herself as
one of the disappointed. After Morris had kissed her, the last time he
was with her, as a ripe assurance of his devotion, she begged him to
go away, to leave her alone, to let her think. Morris went away,
taking another kiss first. But Catherine's meditations had lacked a
certain coherence. She felt his kisses on her lips and on her cheeks
for a long time afterward; the sensation was rather an obstacle than
an aid to reflection. She would have liked to see her situation all
clearly before her, to make up her mind what she should do if, as
she feared, her father should tell her that he disapproved of Morris
Townsend. But all that she could see with any vividness was that it
was terribly strange that anyone should disapprove of him; that
there must in that case be some mistake, some mystery, which in a
little while would be set at rest. She put off deciding and
choosing; before the vision of a conflict with her father she
dropped her eyes and sat motionless, holding her breath and waiting.
It made her heart beat; it was intensely painful. When Morris kissed
her and said these things- that also made her heart beat; but this was
worse, and it frightened her. Nevertheless, today, when the young
man spoke of settling something, taking a line, she felt that it was
the truth, and she answered very simply and without hesitating.

  "We must do our duty," she said. "We must speak to my father. I will
do it tonight; you must do it tomorrow."

  "It is very good of you to do it first," Morris answered. "The young
man- the happy lover- generally does that. But just as you please."

  It pleased Catherine to think that she should be brave for his sake,
and in her satisfaction she even gave a little smile. "Women have more
tact," she said. "They ought to do it first. They are more
conciliating; they can persuade better."

  "You will need all your powers of persuasion. But, after all,"
Morris added, "you are irresistible."

  "Please don't speak that way- and promise me this: Tomorrow, when
you talk with Father, you will be very gentle and respectful."

  "As much so as possible," Morris promised. "It won't be much use,
but I shall try. I certainly would rather have you easily than have to
fight for you."

  "Don't talk about fighting; we shall not fight."

  "Ah, we must be prepared," Morris rejoined, "you especially, because
for you it must come hardest. Do you know the first thing your
father will say to you?"

  "No, Morris; please tell me."

  "He will tell you I am mercenary."

  "Mercenary!"

  "It's a big word, but it means a low thing. It means that I am after
your money."

  "Oh!" murmured Catherine, softly.

  The exclamation was so deprecating and touching that Morris indulged
in another little demonstration of affection. "But he will be sure
to say it," he added.

  "It will be easy to be prepared for that," Catherine said. "I
shall simply say that he is mistaken- that other men may be that
way, but that you are not."

  "You must make a great point of that, for it will be his own great
point."

  Catherine looked at her lover a minute, and then she said, "I
shall persuade him. But I am glad we shall be rich," she added.

  Morris turned away, looking into the crown of his hat. "No, it's a
misfortune," he said at last. "It is from that our difficulty will
come."

  "Well, if it is the worst misfortune, we are not so unhappy. Many
people would not think it so bad. I will persuade him, and after
that we shall be very glad we have money."

  Morris Townsend listened to this robust logic in silence. "I will
leave my defense to you; it's a charge that a man has to stoop to
defend himself from."

  Catherine on her side was silent for awhile; she was looking at
him while he looked, with a good deal of fixedness, out of the window.
"Morris," she said, abruptly, "are you very sure you love me?"

  He turned round, and in a moment he was bending over her. "My own
dearest, can you doubt it?"

  "I have only known it five days," she said, "but now it seems to
me as if I could never do without it."

  "You will never be called upon to try." And he gave a little tender,
reassuring laugh. Then, in a moment, he added, "There is something you
must tell me, too." She had closed her eyes after the last words she
uttered, and kept them closed; and at this she nodded her head,
without opening them. "You must tell me," he went on, "that if your
father is dead against me, if he absolutely forbids our marriage,
you will still be faithful."

  Catherine opened her eyes, gazing at him, and she could give no
better promise than what he read there.

  "You will cleave to me?" said Morris. "You know you are your own
mistress- you are of age."

  "Ah, Morris!" she murmured, for all answer; or rather not for all,
for she put her hand into his own. He kept it awhile, and presently he
kissed her again. This is all that need be recorded of their
conversation; but Mrs. Penniman, if she had been present, would
probably have admitted that it was as well it had not taken place
beside the fountain in Washington Square.

                        CHAPTER 11.

  CATHERINE listened for her father when he came in that evening,
and she heard him go to his study. She sat quiet, though her heart was
beating fast, for nearly half an hour; then she went and knocked at
his door- a ceremony without which she never crossed the threshold
of this apartment. On entering it now, she found him in his chair
beside the fire, entertaining himself with a cigar and the evening
paper.

  "I have something to say to you," she began very gently; and she sat
down in the first place that offered.

  "I shall be very happy to hear it, my dear," said her father. He
waited- waited, looking at her- while she stared, in a long silence,
at the fire. He was curious and impatient, for he was sure she was
going to speak of Morris Townsend; but he let her take her own time,
for he was determined to be very mild.

  "I am engaged to be married!" Catherine announced at last, still
staring at the fire.

  The doctor was startled; the accomplished fact was more than he
had expected; but he betrayed no surprise. "You do right to tell
me," he simply said. "And who is the happy mortal whom you have
honored with your choice?"

  "Mr. Morris Townsend." And as she pronounced her lover's name
Catherine looked at him. What she saw was her father's still gray
eye and his clear-cut, definite smile. She contemplated these
objects for a moment, and then she looked back at the fire; it was
much warmer.

  "When was this arrangement made?" the doctor asked.

  "This afternoon- two hours ago."

  "Was Mr. Townsend here?"

  "Yes, Father; in the front parlor." She was very glad that she was
not obliged to tell him that the ceremony of their betrothal had taken
place out there under the bare ailanthus trees.

  "Is it serious?" said the doctor.

  "Very serious, Father."

  Her father was silent a moment. "Mr. Townsend ought to have told
me."

  "He means to tell you tomorrow."

  "After I know all about it from you? He ought to have told me
before. Does he think I didn't care, because I left you so much
liberty?"

  "Oh no," said Catherine, "he knew you would care. And we have been
so much obliged to you for- for the liberty."

  The doctor gave a short laugh. "You might have made a better use
of it, Catherine."

  "Please don't say that, Father!" the girl urged, softly, fixing
her dull and gentle eyes upon him.

  He puffed his cigar awhile, meditatively. "You have gone very fast,"
he said, at last.

  "Yes," Catherine answered, simply, "I think we have."

  Her father glanced at her an instant, removing his eyes from the
fire. "I don't wonder Mr. Townsend likes you; you are so simple and so
good."

  "I don't know why it is; but he does like me. I am sure of that."

  "And are you very fond of Mr. Townsend?"

  "I like him very much, of course, or I shouldn't consent to marry
him."

  "But you have known him a very short time, my dear."

  "Oh," said Catherine, with some eagerness, "it doesn't take long
to like a person- when once you begin."

  "You must have begun very quickly. Was it the first time you saw
him- that night at your aunt's party?"

  "I don't know, Father," the girl answered. "I can't tell you about
that."

  "Of course; that's your own affair. You will have observed that I
have acted on that principle. I have not interfered; I have left you
your liberty; I have remembered that you are no longer a little
girl- that you have arrived at years of discretion."

  "I feel very old- and very wise," said Catherine, smiling faintly.

  "I am afraid that before long you will feel older and wiser yet. I
don't like your engagement."

  "Ah!" Catherine exclaimed, softly, getting up from her chair.

  "No, my dear. I am sorry to give you pain; but I don't like it.
You should have consulted me before you settled it. I have been too
easy with you, and I feel as if you had taken advantage of my
indulgence. Most decidedly you should have spoken to me first."

  Catherine hesitated a moment, and then, "It was because I was afraid
you wouldn't like it," she confessed.

  "Ah, there it is! You had a bad conscience."

  "No, I have not a bad conscience, Father!" the girl cried out,
with considerable energy. "Please don't accuse me of anything so
dreadful!" These words, in fact, represented to her imagination
something very terrible indeed, something base and cruel, which she
associated with malefactors and prisoners. "It was because I was
afraid- afraid-" she went on.

  "If you were afraid, it was because you had been foolish."

  "I was afraid you didn't like Mr. Townsend."

  "You were quite right. I don't like him."

  "Dear Father, you don't know him," said Catherine, in a voice so
timidly argumentative that it might have touched him.

  "Very true; I don't know him intimately. But I know him enough; I
have my impression of him. You don't know him either."

  She stood before the fire with her hands lightly clasped in front of
her; and her father, leaning back in his chair and looking up at
her, made this remark with a placidity that might have been
irritating.

  I doubt, however, whether Catherine was irritated, though she
broke into a vehement protest. "I don't know him?" she cried. "Why,
I know him- better than I have ever known anyone!"

  "You know a part of him- what he has chosen to show you. But you
don't know the rest."

  "The rest? What is the rest?"

  "Whatever it may be, there is sure to be plenty of it."

  "I know what you mean," said Catherine, remembering how Morris had
forewarned her. "You mean that he is mercenary."

  Her father looked up at her still, with his cold, quiet,
reasonable eye. "If I meant it, my dear, I should say it! But there is
an error I wish particularly to avoid- that of rendering Mr.
Townsend more interesting to you by saying hard things about him."

  "I won't think them hard if they are true," said Catherine.

  "If you don't, you will be a remarkably sensible young woman!"

  "They will be your reasons, at any rate, and you will want me to
hear your reasons."

  The doctor smiled a little. "Very true. You have a perfect right
to ask for them." And he puffed his cigar a few moments. "Very well,
then; without accusing Mr. Townsend of being in love only with your
fortune- and with the fortune that you justly expect- I will say
that there is every reason to suppose that these good things have
entered into his calculation more largely than a tender solicitude for
your happiness strictly requires. There is, of course, nothing
impossible in an intelligent young man entertaining a disinterested
affection for you. You are an honest, amiable girl, and an intelligent
young man might easily find it out. But the principal thing that we
know about this young man- who is, indeed, very intelligent- leads
us to suppose that, however much he may value your personal merits, he
values your money more. The principal thing we know about him is
that he has led a life of dissipation, and has spent a fortune of
his own in doing so. That is enough for me, my dear. I wish you to
marry a young man with other antecedents- a young man who could give
positive guarantees. If Morris Townsend has spent his own fortune in
amusing himself, there is every reason to believe that he would
spend yours."

  The doctor delivered himself of these remarks slowly,
deliberately, with occasional pauses and prolongations of accent,
which made no great allowance for poor Catherine's suspense as to
his conclusion. She sat down at last, with her head bent and her
eyes still fixed upon him; and strangely enough- I hardly know how
to tell it- even while she felt that what he said went so terribly
against her, she admired his neatness and nobleness of expression.
There was something hopeless and oppressive in having to argue with
her father; but she too, on her side, must try to be clear. He was
so quiet; he was not at all angry; and she, too, must be quiet. But
her very effort to be quiet made her tremble.

  "That is not the principal thing we know about him," she said; and
there was a touch of her tremor in her voice. "There are other things-
many other things. He has very high abilities- he wants so much to
do something. He is kind, and generous, and true," said poor
Catherine, who had not suspected hitherto the resources of her
eloquence. "And his fortune- his fortune that he spent- was very
small."

  "All the more reason he shouldn't have spent it," cried the
doctor, getting up with a laugh. Then, as Catherine, who had also
risen to her feet again, stood there in her rather angular
earnestness, wishing so much and expressing so little, he drew her
toward him and kissed her. "You won't think me cruel?" he said,
holding her a moment.

  This question was not reassuring; it seemed to Catherine, on the
contrary, to suggest possibilities which made her feel sick. But she
answered coherently enough, "No, dear Father; because if you knew
how I feel- and you must know, you know everything- you would be so
kind, so gentle."

  "Yes, I think I know how you feel," the doctor said. "I will be very
kind- be sure of that. And I will see Mr. Townsend tomorrow.
Meanwhile, and for the present, be so good as to mention to no one
that you are engaged."

                        CHAPTER 12.

  ON THE MORROW, in the afternoon, he stayed at home, awaiting Mr.
Townsend's call- a proceeding by which it appeared to him (justly
perhaps, for he was a very busy man) that he paid Catherine's suitor
great honor, and gave both these young people so much the less to
complain of. Morris presented himself with a countenance
sufficiently serene- he appeared to have forgotten the "insult" for
which he had solicited Catherine's sympathy two evenings before- and
Doctor Sloper lost no time in letting him know that he had been
prepared for his visit.

  "Catherine told me yesterday what has been going on between you," he
said. "You must allow me to say that it would have been becoming of
you to give me notice of your intentions before they had gone so far."

  "I should have done so," Morris answered, "if you had not had so
much the appearance of leaving your daughter at liberty. She seems
to me quite her own mistress."

  "Literally, she is. But she has not emancipated herself morally
quite so far, I trust, as to choose a husband without consulting me. I
have left her at liberty, but I have not been in the least
indifferent. The truth is, that your little affair has come to a
head with a rapidity that surprises me. It was only the other day that
Catherine made your acquaintance."

  "It was not long ago, certainly," said Morris, with great gravity.
"I admit that we have not been slow to- to arrive at an understanding.
But that was very natural, from the moment we were sure of
ourselves- and of each other. My interest in Miss Sloper began the
first time I saw her."

  "Did it not by chance precede your first meeting?" the doctor asked.

  Morris looked at him an instant. "I certainly had already heard that
she was a charming girl."

  "A charming girl- that's what you think her?"

  "Assuredly. Otherwise I should not be sitting here."

  The doctor meditated a moment. "My dear young man," he said at last,
"you must be very susceptible. As Catherine's father I have, I
trust, a just and tender appreciation of her many good qualities;
but I don't mind telling you that I have never thought of her as a
charming girl, and never expected anyone else to do so."

  Morris Townsend received this statement with a smile that was not
wholly devoid of deference. "I don't know what I might think of her if
I were her father. I can't put myself in that place. I speak from my
own point of view."

  "You speak very well," said the doctor, "but that is not all that is
necessary. I told Catherine yesterday that I disapproved of her
engagement."

  "She let me know as much, and I was very sorry to hear it. I am
greatly disappointed." And Morris sat in silence awhile, looking at
the floor.

  "Did you really expect I would say I was delighted, and throw my
daughter into your arms?"

  "Oh no; I had an idea you didn't like me."

  "What gave you the idea?"

  "The fact that I am poor."

  "That has a harsh sound," said the doctor, "but it is about the
truth- speaking of you strictly as a son-in-law. Your absence of
means, of a profession, of visible resources or prospects, places
you in a category from which it would be imprudent for me to select
a husband for my daughter, who is a weak young woman with a large
fortune. In any other capacity I am perfectly prepared to like you. As
a son-in-law, I abominate you."

  Morris Townsend listened respectfully. "I don't think Miss Sloper is
a weak woman," he presently said.

  "Of course you must defend her- it's the least you can do. But I
have known my child twenty years, and you have known her six weeks.
Even if she were not weak, however, you would still be a penniless
man."

  "Ah, yes; that is my weakness! And therefore, you mean, I am
mercenary- I only want your daughter's money."

  "I don't say that. I am not obliged to say it; and to say it, save
under stress of compulsion, would be very bad taste. I say simply that
you belong to the wrong category."

  "But your daughter doesn't marry a category," Townsend urged, with
his handsome smile. "She marries an individual- an individual whom she
is so good as to say she loves."

  "An individual who offers so little in return."

  "Is it possible to offer more than the most tender affection and a
lifelong devotion?" the young man demanded.

  "It depends how we take it. It is possible to offer a few other
things besides, and not only is it possible, but it is the custom. A
lifelong devotion is measured after the fact; and meanwhile it is
usual in these cases to give a few material securities. What are
yours? A very handsome face and figure, and a very good manner. They
are excellent as far as they go, but they don't go far enough."

  "There is one thing you should add to them," said Morris, "the
word of a gentleman."

  "The word of a gentleman that you will always love Catherine? You
must be a fine gentleman to be sure of that."

  "The word of a gentleman that I am not mercenary; that my
affection for Miss Sloper is as pure and disinterested a sentiment
as was ever lodged in a human breast. I care no more for her fortune
than for the ashes in that grate."

  "I take note- I take note," said the doctor. "But, having done so, I
turn to our category again. Even with that solemn vow on your lips,
you take your place in it. There is nothing against you but an
accident, if you will; but, with my thirty years' medical practice,
I have seen that accidents may have far-reaching consequences."

  Morris smoothed his hat- it was already remarkably glossy- and
continued to display a self-control which, as the doctor was obliged
to admit, was extremely creditable to him. But his disappointment
was evidently keen.

  "Is there nothing I can do to make you believe in me?"

  "If there were, I should be sorry to suggest it, for- don't you
see?- I don't want to believe in you," said the doctor, smiling.

  "I would go and dig in the fields."

  "That would be foolish."

  "I will take the first work that offers tomorrow."

  "Do so by all means- but for your own sake, not for mine."

  "I see; you think I am an idler!" Morris exclaimed, a little too
much in the tone of a man who has made a discovery. But he saw his
error immediately, and blushed.

  "It doesn't matter what I think, when once I have told you I don't
think of you as a son-in-law."

  But Morris persisted: "You think I would squander her money?"

  The doctor smiled. "It doesn't matter, as I say; but I plead
guilty to that."

  "That's because I spent my own, I suppose," said Morris. "I
frankly confess that. I have been wild; I have been foolish. I will
tell you every crazy thing I ever did, if you like. There were some
great follies among the number- I have never concealed that. But I
have sown my wild oats. Isn't there some proverb about a reformed
rake? I was not a rake, but I assure you I have reformed. It is better
to have amused one's self for awhile and have done with it. Your
daughter would never care for a milksop; and I will take the liberty
of saying that you would like one quite as little. Besides, between my
money and hers there is a great difference. I spent my own; it was
because it was my own that I spent it. And I made no debts; when it
was gone I stopped. I don't owe a penny in the world."

  "Allow me to inquire what you are living on now- though I admit,"
the doctor added, "that the question, on my part, is inconsistent."

  "I am living on the remnants of my property," said Morris Townsend.

  "Thank you," the doctor gravely replied.

  Yes, certainly, Morris's self-control was laudable. "Even
admitting I attach an undue importance to Miss Sloper's fortune," he
went on, "would not that be in itself an assurance that I would take
good care of it?"

  "That you should take too much care would be quite as bad as that
you should take too little. Catherine might suffer as much by your
economy as by your extravagance."

  "I think you are very unjust!" The young man made this declaration
decently, civilly, without violence.

  "It is your privilege to think so, and I surrender my reputation
to you! I certainly don't flatter myself I gratify you."

  "Don't you care a little to gratify your daughter? Do you enjoy
the idea of making her miserable?"

  "I am perfectly resigned to her thinking me a tyrant for a
twelvemonth."

  "For a twelvemonth!" exclaimed Morris, with a laugh.

  "For a lifetime, then. She may as well be miserable in that way as
in the other."

  Here at last Morris lost his temper. "Ah, you are not polite,
sir!" he cried.

  "You push me to it- you argue too much."

  "I have a great deal at stake."

  "Well, whatever it is," said the doctor, "you have lost it."

  "Are you sure of that?" asked Morris. "Are you sure your daughter
will give me up?"

  "I mean, of course, you have lost it as far as I am concerned. As
for Catherine's giving you up- no, I am not sure of it. But as I shall
strongly recommend it, as I have a great fund of respect and affection
in my daughter's mind to draw upon, and as she has the sentiment of
duty developed in a very high degree, I think it extremely possible."

  Morris Townsend began to smooth his hat again. "I, too, have a
fund of affection to draw upon," he observed, at last.

  The doctor at this point showed his own first symptoms of
irritation. "Do you mean to defy me?"

  "Call it what you please, sir. I mean not to give your daughter up."

  The doctor shook his head. "I haven't the least fear of your
pining away your life. You are made to enjoy it."

  Morris gave a laugh. "Your opposition to my marriage is all the more
cruel, then. Do you intend to forbid your daughter to see me again?"

  "She is past the age at which people are forbidden, and I am not a
father in an old-fashioned novel. But I shall strongly urge her to
break with you."

  "I don't think she will," said Morris Townsend.

  "Perhaps not; but I shall have done what I could."

  "She has gone too far-" Morris went on.

  "To retreat? Then let her stop where she is."

  "Too far to stop, I mean."

  The doctor looked at him a moment; Morris had his hand on the
door. "There is a great deal of impertinence in your saying it."

  "I will say no more, sir," Morris answered; and, making his bow,
he left the room.

                        CHAPTER 13.

  IT MAY BE THOUGHT the doctor was too positive and Mrs. Almond
intimated as much. But, as he said, he had his impression; it seemed
to him sufficient, and he had no wish to modify it. He had passed
his life in estimating people (it was part of the medical trade),
and in nineteen cases out of twenty he was right.

  "Perhaps Mr. Townsend is the twentieth case," said Mrs. Almond.

  "Perhaps he is, though he doesn't look to me at all like a twentieth
case. But I will give him the benefit of the doubt, and, to make sure,
I will go and talk with Mrs. Montgomery. She will almost certainly
tell me I have done right; but it is just possible that she will prove
to me that I have made the greatest mistake of my life. If she does, I
will beg Mr. Townsend's pardon. You needn't invite her to meet me,
as you kindly proposed; I will write her a frank letter, telling her
how matters stand, and asking leave to come and see her."

  "I am afraid the frankness will be chiefly on your side. The poor
little woman will stand up for her brother, whatever he may be."

  "Whatever he may be! I doubt that. People are not always so fond
of their brothers."

  "Ah," said Mrs. Almond, "when it's a question of thirty thousand a
year coming into a family-"

  "If she stands up for him on account of the money, she will be a
humbug. If she is a humbug, I shall see it. If I see it, I won't waste
time with her."

  "She is not a humbug- she is an exemplary woman. She will not wish
to play her brother a trick simply because he is selfish."

  "If she is worth talking to, she will sooner play him a trick than
that he should play Catherine one. Has she seen Catherine, by the way-
does she know her?"

  "Not to my knowledge. Mr. Townsend can have had no particular
interest in bringing them together."

  "If she is an exemplary woman, no. But we shall see to what extent
she answers your description."

  "I shall be curious to hear her description of you," said Mrs.
Almond, with a laugh. "And, meanwhile, how is Catherine taking it?"

  "As she takes everything- as a matter of course."

  "Doesn't she make a noise? Hasn't she made a scene?"

  "She is not scenic."

  "I thought a lovelorn maiden was always scenic."

  "A ridiculous widow is more so. Lavinia has made me a speech; she
thinks me very arbitrary."

  "She has a talent for being in the wrong," said Mrs. Almond. "But
I am very sorry for Catherine, all the same."

  "So am I. But she will get over it."

  "You believe she will give him up?"

  "I count upon it. She has such an admiration for her father."

  "Oh, we know all about that. But it only makes me pity her the more.
It makes her dilemma the more painful, and the effort of choosing
between you and her lover almost impossible."

  "If she can't choose, all the better."

  "Yes; but he will stand there entreating her to choose, and
Lavinia will pull on that side."

  "I am glad she is not on my side; she is capable of ruining an
excellent cause. The day Lavinia gets into your boat it capsizes.
But she had better be careful," said the doctor. "I will have no
treason in my house."

  "I suspect she will be careful; for she is at bottom very much
afraid of you."

  "They are both afraid of me, harmless as I am," the doctor answered.
"And it is on that that I build- on the salutary terror I inspire."

                        CHAPTER 14.

  HE WROTE his frank letter to Mrs. Montgomery, who punctually
answered it, mentioning an hour at which he might present himself in
the Second Avenue. She lived in a neat little house of red brick,
which had been freshly painted, with the edges of the bricks very
sharply marked out in white. It has now disappeared, with its
companions, to make room for a row of structures more majestic.
There were green shutters upon the windows, without slats, but pierced
with little holes, arranged in groups; and before the house was a
diminutive "yard," ornamented with a bush of mysterious character, and
surrounded by a low wooden paling, painted in the same green as the
shutters. The place looked like a magnified baby-house, and might have
been taken down from a shelf in a toy shop. Doctor Sloper, when he
went to call, said to himself, as he glanced at the objects I have
enumerated, that Mrs. Montgomery was evidently a thrifty and
self-respecting little person- the modest proportions of her
dwelling seemed to indicate that she was of small stature- who took
a virtuous satisfaction in keeping herself tidy, and had resolved
that, since she might not be splendid, she would at least be
immaculate. She received him in a little parlor, which was precisely
the parlor he had expected: a small unspeckled bower, ornamented
with a desultory foliage of tissue paper, and with clusters of glass
drops, amidst which- to carry out the analogy- the temperature of
the leafy season was maintained by means of a cast-iron stove,
emitting a dry blue flame, and smelling strongly of varnish. The walls
were embellished with engravings swathed in pink gauze, and the tables
ornamented with volumes of extracts from the poets, usually bound in
black cloth stamped with florid designs in jaundiced gilt. The
doctor had time to take cognizance of these details; for Mrs.
Montgomery, whose conduct he pronounced under the circumstances
inexcusable, kept him waiting some ten minutes before she appeared. At
last, however, she rustled in, smoothing down a stiff poplin dress,
with a little frightened flush in a gracefully rounded cheek.

  She was a small, plump, fair woman, with a bright, clear eye, and an
extraordinary air of neatness and briskness. But these qualities
were evidently combined with an unaffected humility, and the doctor
gave her his esteem as soon as he had looked at her. A brave little
person, with lively perceptions, and yet a disbelief in her own talent
for social, as distinguished from practical, affairs- this was his
rapid mental resume of Mrs. Montgomery; who, as he saw, was
flattered by what she regarded as the honor of his visit. Mrs.
Montgomery, in her little red house in the Second Avenue, was a person
for whom Dr. Sloper was one of the great men- one of the fine
gentlemen of New York; and while she fixed her agitated eyes upon him,
while she clasped her mittened hands together in her glossy poplin
lap, she had the appearance of saying to herself that he quite
answered her idea of what a distinguished guest would naturally be.
She apologized for being late; but he interrupted her.

  "It doesn't matter," he said, "for while I sat here I had time to
think over what I wish to say to you, and to make up my mind how to
begin."

  "Oh, do begin!" murmured Mrs. Montgomery.

  "It is not so easy," said the doctor, smiling. "You will have
gathered from my letter that I wish to ask you a few questions, and
you may not find it very comfortable to answer them."

  "Yes; I have thought what I should say. It is not very easy."

  "But you must understand my situation- my state of mind. Your
brother wishes to marry my daughter, and I wish to find out what
sort of a young man he is. A good way to do so seemed to be to come
and ask you, which I have proceeded to do."

  Mrs. Montgomery evidently took the situation very seriously; she was
in a state of extreme moral concentration. She kept her pretty eyes,
which were illumined by a sort of brilliant modesty, attached to his
own countenance, and evidently paid the most earnest attention to each
of his words. Her expression indicated that she thought his idea of
coming to see her a very superior conception, but that she was
really afraid to have opinions on strange subjects.

  "I am extremely glad to see you," she said, in a tone which seemed
to admit, at the same time, that this had nothing to do with the
question.

  The doctor took advantage of this admission. "I didn't come to see
you for your pleasure; I came to make you say disagreeable things- and
you can't like that. What sort of a gentleman is your brother?"

  Mrs. Montgomery's illuminated gaze grew vague, and began to
wander. She smiled a little, and for some time made no answer, so that
the doctor at last became impatient. And her answer, when it came, was
not satisfactory. "It is difficult to talk about one's brother."

  "Not when one is fond of him, and when one has plenty of good to
say."

  "Yes, even then, when a good deal depends on it," said Mrs.
Montgomery.

  "Nothing depends on it for you."

  "I mean for- for-" and she hesitated.

  "For your brother himself. I see."

  "I mean for Miss Sloper," said Mrs. Montgomery.

  The doctor liked this; it had the accent of sincerity. "Exactly;
that's the point. If my poor girl should marry your brother,
everything- as regards her happiness- would depend on his being a good
fellow. She is the best creature in the world, and she could never
do him a grain of injury. He, on the other hand, if he should not be
all that we desire, might make her very miserable. That is why I
want you to throw some light upon his character, you know. Of
course, you are not bound to do it. My daughter, whom you have never
seen, is nothing to you; and I, possibly, am only an indiscreet and
impertinent old man. It is perfectly open to you to tell me that my
visit is in very bad taste, and that I had better go about my
business. But I don't think you will do this; because I think we shall
interest you- my poor girl and I. I am sure that if you were to see
Catherine she would interest you very much. I don't mean because she
is interesting in the usual sense of the word, but because you would
feel sorry for her. She is so soft, so simpleminded, she would be such
an easy victim! A bad husband would have remarkable facilities for
making her miserable; for she would have neither the intelligence
nor the resolution to get the better of him, and yet she would have an
exaggerated power of suffering. I see," added the doctor, with his
most insinuating, his most professional laugh, "you are already
interested."

  "I have been interested from the moment he told me he was
engaged," said Mrs. Montgomery.

  "Ah, he says that- he calls it an engagement?"

  "Oh, he has told me you didn't like it."

  "Did he tell you that I don't like him?"

  "Yes, he told me that too. I said I couldn't help it," added Mrs.
Montgomery.

  "Of course you can't. But what you can do is to tell me I am
right- to give me an attestation, as it were." And the doctor
accompanied this remark with another professional smile.

  Mrs. Montgomery, however, smiled not at all; it was obvious that she
could not take the humorous view of his appeal. "That is a good deal
to ask," she said, at last.

  "There can be no doubt of that; and I must, in conscience, remind
you of the advantages a young man marrying my daughter would enjoy.
She has an income of ten thousand dollars in her own right, left her
by her mother; if she marries a husband I approve, she will come
into almost twice as much more at my death."

  Mrs. Montgomery listened in great earnestness to this splendid
financial statement; she had never heard thousands of dollars so
familiarly talked about. She flushed a little with excitement. "Your
daughter will be immensely rich," she said, softly.

  "Precisely- that's the bother of it."

  "And if Morris should marry her, he- he-" And she hesitated,
timidly.

  "He would be master of all that money? By no means. He would be
master of the ten thousand a year that she has from her mother; but
I should leave every penny of my own fortune, earned in the
laborious exercise of my profession, to my nephews and nieces."

  Mrs. Montgomery dropped her eyes at this, and sat for some time
gazing at the straw matting which covered her floor.

  "I suppose it seems to you," said the doctor, laughing, "that in
so doing I should play your brother a very shabby trick."

  "Not at all. That is too much money to get possession of so easily
by marrying. I don't think it would be right."

  "It's right to get all one can. But in this case your brother
wouldn't be able. If Catherine marries without my consent, she doesn't
get a penny from my own pocket."

  "Is that certain?" asked Mrs. Montgomery, looking up.

  "As certain as that I sit here."

  "Even if she should pine away?"

  "Even if she should pine to a shadow, which isn't probable."

  "Does Morris know this?"

  "I shall be most happy to inform him," the doctor exclaimed.

  Mrs. Montgomery resumed her meditations; and her visitor, who was
prepared to give time to the affair, asked himself whether, in spite
of her little conscientious air, she was not playing into her
brother's hands. At the same time he was half ashamed of the ordeal to
which he had subjected her, and was touched by the gentleness with
which she bore it. "If she were a humbug," he said, "she would get
angry, unless she be very deep indeed. It is not probable that she
is as deep as that."

  "What makes you dislike Morris so much?" she presently asked,
emerging from her reflections.

  "I don't dislike him in the least as a friend, as a companion. He
seems to me a charming fellow, and I should think he would be
excellent company. I dislike him exclusively as a son-in-law. If the
only office of a son-in-law were to dine at the paternal table, I
should set a high value upon your brother: He dines capitally. But
that is a small part of his function, which, in general, is to be a
protector and caretaker of my child, who is singularly ill-adapted
to take care of herself. It is there that he doesn't satisfy me. I
confess I have nothing but my impression to go by; but I am in the
habit of trusting my impression. Of course you are at liberty to
contradict it flat. He strikes me as selfish and shallow."

  Mrs. Montgomery's eyes expanded a little, and the doctor fancied
he saw the light of admiration in them. "I wonder you have
discovered he is selfish," she exclaimed.

  "Do you think he hides it so well?"

  "Very well indeed," said Mrs. Montgomery. "And I think we are all
rather selfish," she added, quickly.

  "I think so too; but I have seen people hide it better than he.
You see I am helped by a habit I have of dividing people into classes,
into types. I may easily be mistaken about your brother as an
individual, but his type is written on his whole person."

  "He is very good-looking," said Mrs. Montgomery.

  The doctor eyed her a moment. "You women are all the same! But the
type to which your brother belongs was made to be the ruin of you, and
you were made to be its handmaids and victims. The sign of the type in
question is the determination- sometimes terrible in its quiet
intensity- to accept nothing of life but its pleasures, and to
secure these pleasures chiefly by the aid of your complaisant sex.
Young men of this class never do anything for themselves that they can
get other people to do for them, and it is the infatuation, the
devotion, the superstition of others that keeps them going. These
others, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, are women. What our
young friends chiefly insist upon is that someone else shall suffer
for them; and women do that sort of thing, as you must know,
wonderfully well." The doctor paused a moment, and then he added,
abruptly, "You have suffered immensely for your brother!"

  This exclamation was abrupt, as I say, but it was also perfectly
calculated. The doctor had been rather disappointed at not finding his
compact and comfortable little hostess surrounded in a more visible
degree by the ravages of Morris Townsend's immorality; but he had said
to himself that this was not because the young man had spared her, but
because she had contrived to plaster up her wounds. They were aching
there behind the varnished stove, the festooned engravings, beneath
her own neat little poplin bosom; and if he could only touch the
tender spot, she would make a movement that would betray her. The
words I have just quoted were an attempt to put his finger suddenly
upon the place, and they had some of the success that he looked for.
The tears sprung for a moment to Mrs. Montgomery's eyes, and she
indulged in a proud little jerk of the head.

  "I don't know how you have found that out!" she exclaimed.

  "By a philosophic trick- by what they call induction. You know you
have always your option of contradicting me. But kindly answer me a
question: Don't you give your brother money? I think you ought to
answer that."

  "Yes, I have given him money," said Mrs. Montgomery.

  "And you have not had much to give him?"

  She was silent a moment. "If you ask me for a confession of poverty,
that is easily made. I am very poor."

  "One would never suppose it from your- your charming house," said
the doctor. "I learned from my sister that your income was moderate,
and your family numerous."

  "I have five children," Mrs. Montgomery observed, "but I am happy to
say I can bring them up decently."

  "Of course you can- accomplished and devoted as you are. But your
brother has counted them over, I suppose?"

  "Counted them over?"

  "He knows there are five, I mean. He tells me it is he that brings
them up."

  Mrs. Montgomery stared a moment, and then quickly- "Oh yes; he
teaches them- Spanish."

  The doctor laughed out. "That must take a great deal off your hands!
Your brother also knows, of course, that you have very little money?"

  "I have often told him so," Mrs. Montgomery exclaimed, more
unreservedly than she had yet spoken. She was apparently taking some
comfort in the doctor's clairvoyance.

  "Which means that you have often occasion to, and that he often
sponges on you. Excuse the crudity of my language; I simply express
a fact. I don't ask you how much of your money he has had, it is
none of my business. I have ascertained what I suspected- what I
wished." And the doctor got up, gently smoothing his hat. "Your
brother lives on you," he said, as he stood there.

  Mrs. Montgomery quickly rose from her chair, following her visitor's
movements with a look of fascination. But then, with a certain
inconsequence, "I have never complained of him," she said.

  "You needn't protest- you have not betrayed him. But I advise you
not to give him any more money."

  "Don't you see it is in my interest that he should marry a rich
person?" she asked. "If, as you say, he lives on me, I can only wish
to get rid of him; and to put obstacles in the way of his marrying
is to increase my own difficulties."

  "I wish very much you would come to me with your difficulties," said
the doctor. "Certainly, if I throw him back on your hands, the least I
can do is to help you to bear the burden. If you will allow me to
say so, then, I shall take the liberty of placing in your hands, for
the present, a certain fund for your brother's support."

  Mrs. Montgomery stared; she evidently thought he was jesting; but
she presently saw that he was not, and the complication of her
feelings became painful. "It seems to me that I ought to be very
much offended with you," she murmured.

  "Because I have offered you money? That's a superstition," said
the doctor. "You must let me come and see you again, and we will
talk about these things. I suppose that some of your children are
girls?"

  "I have two little girls," said Mrs. Montgomery.

  "Well, when they grow up, and begin to think of taking husbands, you
will see how anxious you will be about the moral character of these
husbands. Then you will understand this visit of mine."

  "Ah, you are not to believe that Morris's moral character is bad."

  The doctor looked at her a little, with folded arms. "There is
something I should greatly like, as a moral satisfaction. I should
like to hear you say, 'He is abominably selfish.'"

  The words came out with the grave distinctness of his voice, and
they seemed for an instant to create, to poor Mrs. Montgomery's
troubled vision, a material image. She gazed at it an instant, and
then she turned away. "You distress me, sir!" she exclaimed. "He is,
after all, my brother; and his talents, his talents-" On these last
words her voice quavered, and before he knew it she had burst into
tears.

  "His talents are first-rate," said the doctor. "We must find the
proper field for them." And he assured her most respectfully of his
regret at having so greatly discomposed her. "It's all for my poor
Catherine," he went on. "You must know her, and you will see."

  Mrs. Montgomery brushed away her tears, and blushed at having shed
them. "I should like to know your daughter," she answered; and then,
in an instant, "Don't let her marry him!"

  Doctor Sloper went away with the words gently humming in his ears:
"Don't let her marry him!" They gave him the moral satisfaction of
which he had just spoken, and their value was the greater that they
had evidently cost a pang to poor little Mrs. Montgomery's family
pride.

                        CHAPTER 15.

  HE HAD BEEN PUZZLED by the way that Catherine carried herself; her
attitude at this sentimental crisis seemed to him unnaturally passive.
She had not spoken to him again after that scene in the library, the
day before his interview with Morris; and a week had elapsed without
making any change in her manner. There was nothing in it that appealed
for pity, and he was even a little disappointed at her not giving
him an opportunity to make up for his harshness by some
manifestation of liberality which should operate as a compensation. He
thought a little of offering to take her for a tour in Europe; but
he was determined to do this only in case she should seem mutely to
reproach him. He had an idea that she would display a talent for
mute reproaches, and he was surprised at not finding himself exposed
to these silent batteries. She said nothing, either tacitly or
explicitly, and as she was never very talkative, there was now no
especial eloquence in her reserve. And poor Catherine was not sulky- a
style of behavior for which she had too little histrionic talent-
she was simply very patient. Of course she was thinking over her
situation, and she was apparently doing so in a deliberate and
unimpassioned manner, with a view of making the best of it.

  "She will do as I have bidden her," said the doctor; and he made the
further reflection that his daughter was not a woman of a great
spirit.

  I know not whether he had hoped for a little more resistance for the
sake of a little more entertainment; but he said to himself, as he had
said before, that though it might have its momentary alarms, paternity
was, after all, not an exciting vocation.

  Catherine meanwhile had made a discovery of a very different sort;
it had become vivid to her that there was a great excitement in trying
to be a good daughter. She had an entirely new feeling, which may be
described as a state of expectant suspense about her own actions.
She watched herself as she would have watched another person, and
wondered what she would do. It was as if this other person, who was
both herself and not herself, had suddenly sprung into being,
inspiring her with a natural curiosity as to the performance of
untested functions.

  "I am glad I have such a good daughter," said her father, kissing
her, after the lapse of several days.

  "I am trying to be good," she answered, turning away, with a
conscience not altogether clear.

  "If there is anything you would like to say to me, you know you must
not hesitate. You needn't feel obliged to be so quiet. I shouldn't
care that Mr. Townsend should be a frequent topic of conversation, but
whenever you have anything particular to say about him I shall be very
glad to hear it."

  "Thank you," said Catherine, "I have nothing particular at present."

  He never asked her whether she had seen Morris again, because he was
sure that if this had been the case she would tell him. She had, in
fact, not seen him; she had only written him a long letter. The
letter, at least, was long for her; and, it may be added, that it
was long for Morris; it consisted of five pages, in a remarkably
neat and handsome hand. Catherine's handwriting was beautiful, and she
was even a little proud of it: She was extremely fond of copying,
and possessed volumes of extracts which testified to this
accomplishment; volumes which she had exhibited one day to her
lover, when the bliss of feeling that she was important in his eyes
was exceptionally keen. She told Morris, in writing, that her father
had expressed the wish that she should not see him again, and that she
begged he would not come to the house until she should have "made up
her mind." Morris replied with a passionate epistle, in which he asked
to what, in heaven's name, she wished to make up her mind. Had not her
mind been made up two weeks before, and could it be possible that
she entertained the idea of throwing him off? Did she mean to break
down at the very beginning of their ordeal, after all the promises
of fidelity she had both given and extracted? And he gave an account
of his own interview with her father- an account not identical at
all points with that offered in these pages. "He was terribly
violent," Morris wrote, "but you know my self-control. I have need
of it all when I remember that I have it in my power to break in
upon your cruel captivity." Catherine sent him, in answer to this, a
note of three lines. "I am in great trouble; do not doubt of my
affection, but let me wait a little and think." The idea of a struggle
with her father, of setting up her will against his own, was heavy
on her soul, and it kept her quiet, as a great physical weight keeps
us motionless. It never entered into her mind to throw her lover
off; but from the first she tried to assure herself that there would
be a peaceful way out of their difficulty. The assurance was vague,
for it contained no element of positive conviction that her father
would change his mind. She only had an idea that if she should be very
good, the situation would in some mysterious manner improve. To be
good she must be patient, outwardly submissive, abstain from judging
her father too harshly, and from committing any act of open
defiance. He was perhaps right, after all, to think as he did; by
which Catherine meant not in the least that his judgment of Morris's
motives in seeking to marry her was perhaps a just one, but that it
was probably natural and proper that conscientious parents should be
suspicious and even unjust. There were probably people in the world as
bad as her father supposed Morris to be, and if there were the
slightest chance of Morris being one of these sinister persons, the
doctor was right in taking it into account. Of course he could not
know what she knew- how the purest love and truth were seated in the
young man's eyes; but heaven, in its time, might appoint a way of
bringing him to such knowledge. Catherine expected a good deal of
heaven, and referred to the skies the initiative, as the French say,
in dealing with her dilemma. She could not imagine herself imparting
any kind of knowledge to her father; there was something superior even
in his injustice, and absolute in his mistakes. But she could at least
be good, and if she were only good enough, heaven would invent some
way of reconciling all things- the dignity of her father's errors
and the sweetness of her own confidence, the strict performance of her
filial duties, and the enjoyment of Morris Townsend's affection.

  Poor Catherine would have been glad to regard Mrs. Penniman as an
illuminating agent, a part which this lady herself, indeed, was but
imperfectly prepared to play. Mrs. Penniman took too much satisfaction
in the sentimental shadows of this little drama to have, for the
moment, any great interest in dissipating them. She wished the plot to
thicken, and the advice that she gave her niece tended, in her own
imagination, to produce this result. It was rather incoherent counsel,
and from one day to another it contradicted itself; but it was
pervaded by an earnest desire that Catherine should do something
striking. "You must act, my dear; in your situation the great thing is
to act," said Mrs. Penniman, who found her niece altogether beneath
her opportunities. Mrs. Penniman's real hope was that the girl would
make a secret marriage, at which she should officiate as brideswoman
or duenna. She had a vision of this ceremony being performed in some
subterranean chapel- subterranean chapels in New York were not
frequent, but Mrs. Penniman's imagination was not chilled by
trifles- and of the guilty couple- she liked to think of poor
Catherine and her suitor as the guilty couple- being shuffled away
in a fast-whirling vehicle to some obscure lodging in the suburbs,
where she would pay them (in a thick veil) clandestine visits; where
they would endure a period of romantic privation; and when ultimately,
after she should have been their earthly providence, their
intercessor, their advocate, and their medium of communication with
the world, they would be reconciled to her brother in an artistic
tableau, in which she herself should be somehow the central figure.
She hesitated as yet to recommend this course to Catherine, but she
attempted to draw an attractive picture of it to Morris Townsend.
She was in daily communication with the young man, whom she kept
informed by letters of the state of affairs in Washington Square. As
he had been banished, as she said, from the house, she no longer saw
him; but she ended by writing to him that she longed for an interview.
This interview could take place only on neutral ground, and she
bethought herself greatly before selecting a place of meeting. She had
an inclination for Greenwood Cemetery, but she gave it up as too
distant; she could not absent herself for so long, as she said,
without exciting suspicion. Then she thought of the Battery, but
that was rather cold and windy, besides one's being exposed to
intrusion from the Irish immigrants who at this point alight, with
large appetites, in the New World; and at last she fixed upon an
oyster saloon in the Seventh Avenue, kept by a Negro- an establishment
of which she knew nothing save that she had noticed it in passing. She
made an appointment with Morris Townsend to meet him there, and she
went to the tryst at dusk, enveloped in an impenetrable veil. He
kept her waiting for half an hour- he had almost the whole width of
the city to traverse- but she liked to wait, it seemed, to intensify
the situation. She ordered a cup of tea, which proved excessively bad,
and this gave her a sense that she was suffering in a romantic
cause. When Morris at last arrived, they sat together for half an hour
in the duskiest corner of the back shop; and it is hardly too much
to say that this was the happiest half hour that Mrs. Penniman had
known for years. The situation was really thrilling, and it scarcely
seemed to her a false note when her companion asked for an oyster
stew, and proceeded to consume it before her eyes. Morris, indeed,
needed all the satisfaction that stewed oysters could give him, for it
may be intimated to the reader that he regarded Mrs. Penniman in the
light of a fifth wheel to his coach. He was in a state of irritation
natural to a gentleman of fine parts who had been snubbed in a
benevolent attempt to confer a distinction upon a young woman of
inferior characteristics, and the insinuating sympathy of this
somewhat desiccated matron appeared to offer him no practical
relief. He thought her a humbug, and he judged of humbugs with a
good deal of confidence. He had listened and made himself agreeable to
her at first, in order to get a footing in Washington Square; and at
present he needed all his self-command to be decently civil. It
would have gratified him to tell her that she was a fantastic old
woman, and that he would like to put her into an omnibus and send
her home. We know, however, that Morris possessed the virtue of
self-control, and he had moreover the constant habit of seeking to
be agreeable; so that, although Mrs. Penniman's demeanor only
exasperated his already unquiet nerves, he listened to her with a
somber deference in which she found much to admire.

                        CHAPTER 16.

  THEY HAD Of Course immediately spoken of Catherine. "Did she send
a message, or- or anything?" Morris asked. He appeared to think that
she might have sent him a trinket or a lock of her hair.

  Mrs. Penniman was slightly embarrassed, for she had not told her
niece of her intended expedition. "Not exactly a message," she said.
"I didn't ask her for one, because I was afraid to- to excite her."

  "I am afraid she is not very excitable." And Morris gave a smile
of some bitterness.

  "She is better than that- she is steadfast, she is true."

  "Do you think she will hold fast, then?"

  "To the death!"

  "Oh, I hope it won't come to that," said Morris.

  "We must be prepared for the worst, and that is what I wish to speak
to you about."

  "What do you call the worst?"

  "Well," said Mrs. Penniman, "my brother's hard, intellectual
nature."

  "Oh, the devil!"

  "He is impervious to pity," Mrs. Penniman added, by way of
explanation.

  "Do you mean that he won't come round?"

  "He will never be vanquished by argument. I have studied him. He
will be vanquished only by the accomplished fact."

  "The accomplished fact?"

  "He will come round afterward," said Mrs. Penniman, with extreme
significance. "He cares for nothing but facts- he must be met by
facts."

  "Well," rejoined Morris, "it is a fact that I wish to marry his
daughter. I met him with that the other day, but he was not at all
vanquished."

  Mrs. Penniman was silent a little, and her smile beneath the
shadow of her capacious bonnet, on the edge of which her black veil
was arranged curtainwise, fixed itself upon Morris's face with a still
more tender brilliancy. "Marry Catherine first, and meet him
afterward!" she exclaimed.

  "Do you recommend that?" asked the young man, frowning heavily.

  She was a little frightened, but she went on with considerable
boldness. "That is the way I see it: a private marriage- a private
marriage." She repeated the phrase because she liked it.

  "Do you mean that I should carry Catherine off? What do they call
it- elope with her?"

  "It is not a crime when you are driven to it," said Mrs. Penniman.
"My husband, as I have told you, was a distinguished clergyman- one of
the most eloquent men of his day. He once married a young couple
that had fled from the house of the young lady's father; he was so
interested in their story. He had no hesitation, and everything came
out beautifully. The father was afterward reconciled, and thought
everything of the young man. Mr. Penniman married them in the evening,
about seven o'clock. The church was so dark you could scarcely see,
and Mr. Penniman was intensely agitated- he was so sympathetic. I
don't believe he could have done it again."

  "Unfortunately, Catherine and I have not Mr. Penniman to marry
us," said Morris.

  "No, but you have me!" rejoined Mrs. Penniman, expressively. "I
can't perform the ceremony, but I can help you; I can watch!"

  "The woman's an idiot!" thought Morris, but he was obliged to say
something different. It was not, however, materially more civil.
"Was it in order to tell me this that you requested I would meet you
here?"

  Mrs. Penniman had been conscious of a certain vagueness in her
errand, and of not being able to offer him any very tangible reward
for his long walk. "I thought perhaps you would like to see one who is
so near to Catherine," she observed, with considerable majesty, "and
also," she added, "that you would value an opportunity of sending
her something."

  Morris extended his empty hands with a melancholy smile. "I am
greatly obliged to you, but I have nothing to send."

  "Haven't you a word?" asked his companion, with her suggestive smile
coming back.

  Morris frowned again.

  "Tell her to hold fast," he said, rather curtly.

  "That is a good word- a noble word: It will make her happy for
many days. She is very touching, very brave," Mrs. Penniman went on,
arranging her mantle and preparing to depart. While she was so engaged
she had an inspiration; she found the phrase that she could boldly
offer as a vindication of the step she had taken. "If you marry
Catherine at all risks," she said, "you will give my brother a proof
of your being what he pretends to doubt."

  "What he pretends to doubt?"

  "Don't you know what that is?" Mrs. Penniman asked, almost
playfully.

  "It does not concern me to know," said Morris, grandly.

  "Of course it makes you angry."

  "I despise it," Morris declared.

  "Ah, you know what it is, then?" said Mrs. Penniman, shaking her
finger at him. "He pretends that you like- you like the money."

  Morris hesitated a moment; and then, as if he spoke advisedly, "I do
like the money!"

  "Ah, but not- but not as he means it. You don't like it more than
Catherine?"

  He leaned his elbows on the table and buried his head in his
hands. "You torture me!" he murmured. And, indeed, this was almost the
effect of the poor lady's too importunate interest in his situation.

  But she insisted in making her point. "If you marry her in spite
of him, he will take for granted that you expect nothing of him, and
are prepared to do without it; and so he will see that you are
disinterested."

  Morris raised his head a little, following this argument. "And
what shall I gain by that?"

  "Why, that he will see that he has been wrong in thinking that you
wished to get his money."

  "And seeing that I wish he would go to the deuce with it, he will
leave it to a hospital. Is that what you mean?" asked Morris.

  "No, I don't mean that, though that would be very grand," Mrs.
Penniman quickly added. "I mean that, having done you such an
injustice, he will think it his duty, at the end, to make some
amends."

  Morris shook his head, though it must be confessed he was a little
struck with this idea. "Do you think he is so sentimental?"

  "He is not sentimental," said Mrs. Penniman, "but, to be perfectly
fair to him, I think he has, in his own narrow way, a certain sense of
duty."

  There passed through Morris Townsend's mind a rapid wonder as to
what he might, even under a remote contingency, be indebted to from
the action of this principle in Doctor Sloper's breast, and the
inquiry exhausted itself in his sense of the ludicrous. "Your
brother has no duties to me," he said presently, "and I none to him."

  "Ah, but he has duties to Catherine."

  "Yes; but you see, on that principle Catherine has duties to him
as well."

  Mrs. Penniman got up with a melancholy sigh, as if she thought him
very unimaginative. "She has always performed them faithfully; and now
do you think she has no duties to you?" Mrs. Penniman always, even
in conversation, italicized her personal pronouns.

  "It would sound harsh to say so. I am so grateful for her love,"
Morris added.

  "I will tell her you said that. And now, remember that if you need
me I am there." And Mrs. Penniman, who could think of nothing more
to say, nodded vaguely in the direction of Washington Square.

  Morris looked some moments at the sanded floor of the shop; he
seemed to be disposed to linger a moment. At last, looking up with a
certain abruptness, "It is your belief that if she marries me he
will cut her off?" he asked.

  Mrs. Penniman stared a little, and smiled. "Why, I have explained to
you what I think would happen- that in the end it would be the best
thing to do."

  "You mean that, whatever she does, in the long run she will get
the money?"

  "It doesn't depend upon her, but upon you. Venture to appear as
disinterested as you are," said Mrs. Penniman, ingeniously. Morris
dropped his eyes on the sanded floor again, pondering this, and she
pursued: "Mr. Penniman and I had nothing, and we were very happy.
Catherine, moreover, has her mother's fortune, which, at the time my
sister-in-law married, was considered a very handsome one."

  "Oh, don't speak of that!" said Morris; and indeed it was quite
superfluous, for he had contemplated the fact in all its lights.

  "Austin married a wife with money- why shouldn't you?"

  "Ah, but your brother was a doctor," Morris objected.

  "Well, all young men can't be doctors."

  "I should think it an extremely loathsome profession," said
Morris, with an air of intellectual independence; then, in a moment,
he went on rather inconsequently, "Do you suppose there is a will
already made in Catherine's favor?"

  "I suppose so even doctors must die; and perhaps a little in
mine," Mrs. Penniman frankly added.

  "And you believe he would certainly change it- as regards
Catherine?"

  "Yes; and then change it back again."

  "Ah, but one can't depend on that," said Morris.

  "Do you want to depend on it?" Mrs. Penniman asked.

  Morris blushed a little. "Well, I am certainly afraid of being the
cause of an injury to Catherine."

  "Ah, you must not be afraid. Be afraid of nothing, and everything
will go well."

  And then Mrs. Penniman paid for her cup of tea, and Morris paid
for his oyster stew, and they went out together into the dimly lighted
wilderness of the Seventh Avenue. The dusk had closed in completely,
and the street lamps were separated by wide intervals of a pavement in
which cavities and fissures played a disproportionate part. An
omnibus, emblazoned with strange pictures, went tumbling over the
dislocated cobblestones.

  "How will you go home?" Morris asked, following this vehicle with an
interested eye. Mrs. Penniman had taken his arm.

  She hesitated a moment. "I think this manner would be pleasant," she
said; and she continued to let him feel the value of his support.

  So he walked with her through the devious ways of the west side of
the town, and through the bustle of gathering nightfall in populous
streets, to the quiet precinct of Washington Square. They lingered a
moment at the foot of Doctor Sloper's white marble steps, above
which a spotless white door, adorned with a glittering silver plate,
seemed to figure for Morris the closed portal of happiness; and then
Mrs. Penniman's companion rested a melancholy eye upon a lighted
window in the upper part of the house.

  "That is my room- my dear little room!" Mrs. Penniman remarked.

  Morris started. "Then I needn't come walking round the Square to
gaze at it."

  "That's as you please. But Catherine's is behind; two noble
windows on the second floor. I think you can see them from the other
street."

  "I don't want to see them, ma'am." And Morris turned his back to the
house.

  "I will tell her you have been here, at any rate," said Mrs.
Penniman, pointing to the spot where they stood, "and I will give
her your message- that she is to hold fast."

  "Oh yes; of course. You know I write her all that."

  "It seems to say more when it is spoken. And remember, if you need
me, that I am here," and Mrs. Penniman glanced at the third floor.

  On this they separated, and Morris, left to himself, stood looking
at the house a moment; after which he turned away, and took a gloomy
walk round the Square, on the opposite side, close to the wooden
fence. Then he came back, and paused for a minute in front of Doctor
Sloper's dwelling. His eyes traveled over it; they even rested on
the ruddy windows of Mrs. Penniman's apartment. He thought it a
devilish comfortable house.

                        CHAPTER 17.

  MRS. PENNIMAN told Catherine that evening- the two ladies were
sitting in the back parlor- that she had had an interview with
Morris Townsend; and on receiving this news the girl started with a
sense of pain. She felt angry for the moment; it was almost the
first time she had ever felt angry. It seemed to her that her aunt was
meddlesome; and from this came a vague apprehension that she would
spoil something.

  "I don't see why you should have seen him. I don't think it was
right," Catherine said.

  "I was so sorry for him- it seemed to me someone ought to see him."

  "No one but I," said Catherine, who felt as if she were making the
most presumptuous speech of her life, and yet at the same time had
an instinct that she was right in doing so.

  "But you wouldn't, my dear," Aunt Lavinia rejoined, "and I didn't
know what might have become of him."

  "I have not seen him because my father has forbidden it,"
Catherine said, very simply.

  There was a simplicity in this, indeed, which fairly vexed Mrs.
Penniman. "If your father forbade you to go to sleep, I suppose you
would keep awake!" she commented.

  Catherine looked at her. "I don't understand you. You seem to me
very strange."

  "Well, my dear, you will understand me someday!" And Mrs.
Penniman, who was reading the evening paper, which she perused daily
from the first line to the last, resumed her occupation. She wrapped
herself in silence; she was determined Catherine should ask her for an
account of her interview with Morris. But Catherine was silent for
so long that she almost lost patience; and she was on the point of
remarking to her that she was very heartless, when the girl at last
spoke.

  "What did he say?" she asked.

  "He said he is ready to marry you any day, in spite of everything."

  Catherine made no answer to this, and Mrs. Penniman almost lost
patience again; owing to which she at last volunteered the information
that Morris looked very handsome, but terribly haggard.

  "Did he seem sad?" asked her niece.

  "He was dark under the eyes," said Mrs. Penniman. "So different from
when I first saw him; though I am not sure that if I had seen him in
this condition the first time, I should not have been even more struck
with him. There is something brilliant in his very misery."

  This was, to Catherine's sense, a vivid picture, and though she
disapproved, she felt herself gazing at it. "Where did you see him?"
she asked, presently.

  "In- in the Bowery; at a confectioner's," said Mrs. Penniman, who
had a general idea that she ought to dissemble a little.

  "Whereabouts is the place?" Catherine inquired, after another pause.

  "Do you wish to go there, my dear?" said her aunt.

  "Oh no." And Catherine got up from her seat and went to the fire,
where she stood looking awhile at the glowing coals.

  "Why are you so dry, Catherine?" Mrs. Penniman said at last.

  "So dry?"

  "So cold- so irresponsive."

  The girl turned very quickly. "Did he say that?"

  Mrs. Penniman hesitated a moment. "I will tell you what he said.
He said he feared only one thing- that you would be afraid."

  "Afraid of what?"

  "Afraid of your father."

  Catherine turned back to the fire again, and then, after a pause,
she said, "I am afraid of my father."

  Mrs. Penniman got quickly up from her chair and approached her
niece. "Do you mean to give him up, then?"

  Catherine for some time never moved; she kept her eyes on the coals.
At last she raised her head and looked at her aunt. "Why do you push
me so?" she asked.

  "I don't push you. When have I spoken to you before?"

  "It seems to me that you have spoken to me several times."

  "I am afraid it is necessary, then, Catherine," said Mrs.
Penniman, with a good deal of solemnity. "I am afraid you don't feel
the importance"- she paused a little; Catherine was looking at her-
"the importance of not disappointing that gallant young heart!" And
Mrs. Penniman went back to her chair by the lamp, and, with a little
jerk, picked up the evening paper again.

  Catherine stood there before the fire, with her hands behind her,
looking at her aunt, to whom it seemed that the girl had never had
just this dark fixedness in her gaze. "I don't think you understand or
that you know me," she said.

  "If I don't, it is not wonderful; you trust me so little."

  Catherine made no attempt to deny this charge, and for some time
more nothing was said. But Mrs. Penniman's imagination was restless,
and the evening paper failed on this occasion to enchain it.

  "If you succumb to the dread of your father's wrath," she said, "I
don't know what will become of us."

  "Did he tell you to say these things to me?"

  "He told me to use my influence."

  "You must be mistaken," said Catherine. "He trusts me."

  "I hope he may never repent of it!" And Mrs. Penniman gave a
little sharp slap to her newspaper. She knew not what to make of her
niece, who had suddenly become stern and contradictious.

  This tendency on Catherine's part was presently even more
apparent. "You had much better not make any more appointments with Mr.
Townsend," she said. "I don't think it is right."

  Mrs. Penniman rose with considerable majesty. "My poor child, are
you jealous of me?" she inquired.

  "Oh, Aunt Lavinia!" murmured Catherine, blushing.

  "I don't think it is your place to teach me what is right."

  On this point Catherine made no concession. "It can't be right to
deceive."

  "I certainly have not deceived you!"

  "Yes; but I promised my father-"

  "I have no doubt you promised your father. But I have promised him
nothing."

  Catherine had to admit this, and she did so in silence. "I don't
believe Mr. Townsend himself likes it," she said, at last.

  "Doesn't like meeting me?"

  "Not in secret."

  "It was not in secret; the place was full of people."

  "But it was a secret place- away off in the Bowery."

  Mrs. Penniman flinched a little. "Gentlemen enjoy such things,"
she remarked, presently. "I know what gentlemen like."

  "My father wouldn't like it, if he knew."

  "Pray, do you propose to inform him?" Mrs. Penniman inquired.

  "No, Aunt Lavinia. But please don't do it again."

  "If I do it again you will inform him- is that what you mean? I
do not share your dread of my brother; I have always known how to
defend my own position. But I shall certainly never again take any
step on your behalf; you are much too thankless. I knew you were not a
spontaneous nature, but I believed you were firm, and I told your
father that he would find you so. I am disappointed, but your father
will not be." And with this Mrs. Penniman offered her niece a brief
good-night, and withdrew to her own apartment.

                        CHAPTER 18.

  CATHERINE SAT ALONE by the parlor fire- sat there for more than an
hour, lost in her meditations. Her aunt seemed to her aggressive and
foolish; and to see it so clearly- to judge Mrs. Penniman so
positively- made her feel old and grave. She did not resent the
imputation of weakness; it made no impression on her, for she had
not the sense of weakness, and she was not hurt at not being
appreciated. She had an immense respect for her father, and she felt
that to displease him would be a misdemeanor analogous to an act of
profanity in a great temple; but her purpose had slowly ripened, and
she believed that her prayers had purified it of its violence. The
evening advanced, and the lamp burnt dim without her noticing it;
her eyes were fixed upon her terrible plan. She knew her father was in
his study- that he had been there all the evening; from time to time
she expected to hear him move. She thought he would perhaps come, as
he sometimes came, into the parlor. At last the clock struck eleven,
and the house was wrapped in silence; the servants had gone to bed.
Catherine got up and went slowly to the door of the library, where she
waited a moment, motionless. Then she knocked, and then she waited
again. Her father had answered her, but she had not the courage to
turn the latch. What she had said to her aunt was true enough- she was
afraid of him; and in saying that she had no sense of weakness, she
meant that she was not afraid of herself. She heard him move within,
and he came and opened the door for her.

  "What is the matter?" asked the doctor. "You are standing there like
a ghost!"

  She went into the room, but it was some time before she contrived to
say what she had come to say. Her father, who was in his dressing gown
and slippers, had been busy at his writing table, and after looking at
her for some moments, and waiting for her to speak, he went and seated
himself at his papers again. His back was turned to her- she began
to hear the scratching of his pen. She remained near the door, with
her heart thumping beneath her bodice; and she was very glad that
his back was turned, for it seemed to her that she could more easily
address herself to this portion of his person than to his face. At
last she began, watching it while she spoke.

  "You told me that if I should have anything more to say about Mr.
Townsend you would be glad to listen to it."

  "Exactly, my dear," said the doctor, not turning round, but stopping
his pen.

  Catherine wished it would go on, but she herself continued: "I
thought I would tell you that I have not seen him again, but that I
should like to do so."

  "To bid him good-bye?" asked the doctor.

  The girl hesitated a moment. "He is not going away."

  The doctor wheeled slowly round in his chair, with a smile that
seemed to accuse her of an epigram; but extremes meet, and Catherine
had not intended one. "It is not to bid him good-bye, then?" her
father said.

  "No, Father, not that; at least not forever. I have not seen him
again, but I should like to see him," Catherine repeated.

  The doctor slowly rubbed his underlip with the feather of his quill.

  "Have you written to him?"

  "Yes, four times."

  "You have not dismissed him, then. Once would have done that."

  "No," said Catherine, "I have asked him- asked him to wait."

  Her father sat looking at her, and she was afraid he was going to
break out into wrath, his eyes were so fine and cold.

  "You are a dear, faithful child," he said, at last. "Come here to
your father." And he got up, holding out his hands toward her.

  The words were a surprise, and they gave her an exquisite joy. She
went to him, and he put his arm round her tenderly, soothingly; and
then he kissed her. After this he said, "Do you wish to make me very
happy?"

  "I should like to- but I am afraid I can't," Catherine answered.

  "You can if you will. It all depends on your will."

  "Is it to give him up?" said Catherine.

  "Yes, it is to give him up."

  And he held her still, with the same tenderness, looking into her
face and resting his eyes on her averted eyes. There was a long
silence; she wished he would release her.

  "You are happier than I, Father," she said, at last.

  "I have no doubt you are unhappy just now. But it is better to be
unhappy for three months and get over it, than for many years and
never get over it."

  "Yes, if that were so," said Catherine.

  "It would be so; I am sure of that." She answered nothing, and he
went on: "Have you no faith in my wisdom, in my tenderness, in my
solicitude for your future?"

  "Oh, Father!" murmured the girl.

  "Don't you suppose that I know something of men- their vices,
their follies, their falsities?"

  She detached herself, and turned upon him. "He is not vicious- he is
not false!"

  Her father kept looking at her with his sharp, pure eye. "You make
nothing of my judgment, then?"

  "I can't believe that!"

  "I don't ask you to believe it, but to take it on trust."

  Catherine was far from saying to herself that this was an
ingenious sophism; but she met the appeal none the less squarely.
"What has he done- what do you know?"

  "He has never done anything- he is a selfish idler."

  "Oh, Father, don't abuse him!" she exclaimed, pleadingly.

  "I don't mean to abuse him; it would be a great mistake. You may
do as you choose," he added, turning away.

  "I may see him again?"

  "Just as you choose."

  "Will you forgive me?"

  "By no means."

  "It will only be for once."

  "I don't know what you mean by once. You must either give him up
or continue the acquaintance."

  "I wish to explain- to tell him to wait."

  "To wait for what?"

  "Till you know him better- till you consent."

  "Don't tell him any such nonsense as that. I know him well enough,
and I shall never consent."

  "But we can wait a long time," said poor Catherine, in a tone
which was meant to express the humblest conciliation, but which had
upon her father's nerves the effect of an iteration not
characterized by tact.

  The doctor answered, however, quietly enough: "Of course; you can
wait till I die, if you like."

  Catherine gave a cry of natural horror.

  "Your engagement will have one delightful effect upon you; it will
make you extremely impatient for that event."

  Catherine stood staring, and the doctor enjoyed the point he had
made. It came to Catherine with the force- rather with the vague
impressiveness- of a logical axiom which it was not in her province to
controvert; and yet, though it was a scientific truth, she felt wholly
unable to accept it.

  "I would rather not marry, if that were true," she said.

  "Give me a proof of it, then; for it is beyond a question that by
engaging yourself to Morris Townsend you simply wait for my death."

  She turned away, feeling sick and faint; and the doctor went on:
"And if you wait for it with impatience, judge, if you please, what
his eagerness will be."

  Catherine turned it over- her father's words had such an authority
for her that her very thoughts were capable of obeying him. There
was a dreadful ugliness in it, which seemed to glare at her through
the interposing medium of her own feebler reason. Suddenly, however,
she had an inspiration- she almost knew it to be an inspiration.

  "If I don't marry before your death, I will not after," she said.

  To her father, it must be admitted, this seemed only another
epigram; and as obstinacy, in unaccomplished minds, does not usually
select such a mode of expression, he was the more surprised at this
wanton play of a fixed idea.

  "Do you mean that for an impertinence?" he inquired; an inquiry of
which, as he made it, he quite perceived the grossness.

  "An impertinence? Oh, Father, what terrible things you say!"

  "If you don't wait for my death, you might as well marry
immediately; there is nothing else to wait for."

  For some time Catherine made no answer; but finally she said, "I
think Morris- little by little- might persuade you."

  "I shall never let him speak to me again. I dislike him too much."

  Catherine gave a long, low sigh; she tried to stifle it, for she had
made up her mind that it was wrong to make a parade of her trouble,
and to endeavor to act upon her father by the meretricious aid of
emotion. Indeed, she even thought it wrong- in the sense of being
inconsiderate- to attempt to act upon his feelings at all; her part
was to effect some gentle, gradual change in his intellectual
perception of poor Morris's character. But the means of effecting such
a change were at present shrouded in mystery, and she felt miserably
helpless and hopeless. She had exhausted all arguments, all replies.
Her father might have pitied her, and in fact he did so; but he was
sure he was right.

  "There is one thing you can tell Mr. Townsend when you see him
again," he said, "that if you marry without my consent, I don't
leave you a farthing of money. That will interest him more than
anything else you can tell him."

  "That would be very right," Catherine answered. "I ought not in that
case to have a farthing of your money."

  "My dear child," the doctor observed, laughing, "your simplicity
is touching. Make that remark, in that tone, and with that
expression of countenance, to Mr. Townsend, and take a note of his
answer. It won't be polite- it will express irritation; and I shall be
glad of that, as it will put me in the right; unless, indeed- which is
perfectly possible- you should like him the better for being rude to
you."

  "He will never be rude to me," said Catherine, gently.

  "Tell him what I say, all the same."

  She looked at her father, and her quiet eyes filled with tears.

  "I think I will see him, then," she murmured, in her timid voice.

  "Exactly as you choose." And he went to the door and opened it for
her to go out. The movement gave her a terrible sense of his turning
her off.

  "It will be only once, for the present," she added, lingering a
moment.

  "Exactly as you choose," he repeated, standing there with his hand
on the door. "I have told you what I think. If you see him, you will
be an ungrateful, cruel child; you will have given your old father the
greatest pain of his life."

  This was more than the poor girl could bear; her tears overflowed,
and she moved toward her grimly consistent parent with a pitiful
cry. Her hands were raised in supplication, but he sternly evaded this
appeal. Instead of letting her sob out her misery on his shoulder,
he simply took her by the arm and directed her course across the
threshold, closing the door gently but firmly behind her. After he had
done so, he remained listening. For a long time there was no sound; he
knew that she was standing outside. He was sorry for her, as I have
said; but he was so sure he was right. At last he heard her move away,
and then her footstep creaked faintly upon the stairs.

  The doctor took several turns round his study, with his hands in his
pockets, and a thin sparkle, possibly of irritation, but partly also
of something like humor, in his eye. "By Jove," he said to himself, "I
believe she will stick- I believe she will stick!" And this idea of
Catherine "sticking" appeared to have a comical side, and to offer a
prospect of entertainment. He determined, as he said to himself, to
see it out.

                        CHAPTER 19.

  IT WAS for reasons connected with this determination that on the
morrow he sought a few words of private conversation with Mrs.
Penniman. He sent for her to the library, and he there informed her
that he hoped very much that, as regarded this affair of
Catherine's, she would mind her p's and q's.

  "I don't know what you mean by such an expression," said his sister.
"You speak as if I were learning the alphabet."

  "The alphabet of common sense is something you will never learn,"
the doctor permitted himself to respond.

  "Have you called me here to insult me?" Mrs. Penniman inquired.

  "Not at all. Simply to advise you. You have taken up young Townsend;
that's your own affair. I have nothing to do with your sentiments,
your fancies, your affections, your delusions; but what I request of
you is that you will keep these things to yourself. I have explained
my views to Catherine; she understands them perfectly, and anything
that she does further in the way of encouraging Mr. Townsend's
attentions will be in deliberate opposition to my wishes. Anything
that you should do in the way of giving her aid and comfort will be-
permit me the expression- distinctly treasonable. You know high
treason is a capital offense: Take care how you incur the penalty."

  Mrs. Penniman threw back her head, with a certain expansion of the
eye which she occasionally practiced. "It seems to me that you talk
like a great autocrat."

  "I talk like my daughter's father."

  "Not like your sister's brother," cried Lavinia.

  "My dear Lavinia," said the doctor, "I sometimes wonder whether I am
your brother, we are so extremely different. In spite of
differences, however, we can, at a pinch, understand each other; and
that is the essential thing just now. Walk straight with regard to Mr.
Townsend; that's all I ask. It is highly probable you have been
corresponding with him for the last three weeks- perhaps even seeing
him. I don't ask you- you needn't tell me." He had a moral
conviction that she would contrive to tell a fib about the matter,
which it would disgust him to listen to. "Whatever you have done, stop
doing it; that's all I wish."

  "Don't you wish also by chance to murder your child?" Mrs.
Penniman inquired.

  "On the contrary, I wish to make her live and be happy."

  "You will kill her: She passed a dreadful night."

  "She won't die of one dreadful night, nor of a dozen. Remember
that I am a distinguished physician."

  Mrs. Penniman hesitated a moment; then she risked her retort.
"Your being a distinguished physician has not prevented you from
already losing two members of your family."

  She had risked it, but her brother gave her such a terribly incisive
look- a look so like a surgeon's lancet- that she was frightened at
her courage. And he answered her, in words that corresponded to the
look, "It may not prevent me, either, from losing the society of still
another."

  Mrs. Penniman took herself off with whatever air of depreciated
merit was at her command, and repaired to Catherine's room, where
the poor girl was closeted. She knew all about her dreadful night, for
the two had met again, the evening before, after Catherine left her
father. Mrs. Penniman was on the landing of the second floor when
her niece came upstairs; it was not remarkable that a person of so
much subtlety should have discovered that Catherine had been shut up
with the doctor. It was still less remarkable that she should have
felt an extreme curiosity to learn the result of this interview, and
that this sentiment, combined with her great amiability and
generosity, should have prompted her to regret the sharp words
lately exchanged between her niece and herself. As the unhappy girl
came into sight in the dusky corridor, she made a lively demonstration
of sympathy. Catherine's bursting heart was equally oblivious; she
only knew that her aunt was taking her into her arms. Mrs. Penniman
drew her into Catherine's own room, and the two women sat there
together far into the small hours, the younger one with her head on
the other's lap, sobbing, and sobbing at first in a soundless, stifled
manner, and then at last perfectly still. It gratified Mrs. Penniman
to be able to feel conscientiously that this scene virtually removed
the interdict which Catherine had placed upon her indulging in further
communion with Morris Townsend. She was not gratified, however,
when, in coming back to her niece's room before breakfast, she found
that Catherine had risen and was preparing herself for this meal.

  "You should not go to breakfast," she said. "You are not well
enough, after your fearful night."

  "Yes, I am very well, and I am only afraid of being late."

  "I can't understand you," Mrs. Penniman cried. "You should stay in
bed for three days."

  "Oh, I could never do that," said Catherine, to whom this idea
presented no attractions.

  Mrs. Penniman was in despair; and she noted, with extreme annoyance,
that the trace of the night's tears had completely vanished from
Catherine's eyes. She had a most impracticable physique. "What
effect do you expect to have upon your father," her aunt demanded, "if
you come plumping down, without a vestige of any sort of feeling, as
if nothing in the world had happened?"

  "He would not like me to lie in bed," said Catherine, simply.

  "All the more reason for your doing it. How else do you expect to
move him?"

  Catherine thought a little. "I don't know how; but not in that
way. I wish to be just as usual." And she finished dressing- and,
according to her aunt's expression, went plumping down into the
paternal presence. She was really too modest for consistent pathos.

  And yet it was perfectly true that she had had a dreadful night.
Even after Mrs. Penniman left her she had had no sleep; she lay
staring at the uncomforting gloom, with her eyes and ears filled
with the movement with which her father had turned her out of his
room, and of the words in which he had told her that she was a
heartless daughter. Her heart was breaking; she had heart enough for
that. At moments it seemed to her that she believed him, and that to
do what she was doing a girl must indeed be bad. She was bad; but
she couldn't help it. She would try to appear good, even if her
heart were perverted; and from time to time she had a fancy that she
might accomplish something by ingenious concessions to form, though
she should persist in caring for Morris. Catherine's ingenuities
were indefinite, and we are not called upon to expose their
hollowness. The best of them, perhaps, showed itself in that freshness
of aspect which was so discouraging to Mrs. Penniman, who was amazed
at the absence of haggardness in a young woman who for a whole night
had lain quivering beneath a father's curse. Poor Catherine was
conscious of her freshness; it gave her a feeling about the future
which rather added to the weight upon her mind. It seemed a proof that
she was strong and solid and dense, and would live to a great age-
longer than might be generally convenient; and this idea was pressing,
for it appeared to saddle her with a pretension the more, just when
the cultivation of any pretension was inconsistent with her doing
right. She wrote that day to Morris Townsend, requesting him to come
and see her on the morrow, using very few words, and explaining
nothing. She would explain everything face to face.

                        CHAPTER 20.

  ON THE MORROW, in the afternoon, she heard his voice at the door,
and his step in the hall. She received him in the big, bright front
parlor, and she instructed the servant that, if anyone should call,
she was particularly engaged. She was not afraid of her father's
coming in, for at that hour he was always driving about town. When
Morris stood there before her, the first thing that she was
conscious of was that he was even more beautiful to look at than
fond recollection had painted him; the next was that he had pressed
her in his arms. When she was free again it appeared to her that she
had now indeed thrown herself into the gulf of defiance, and even, for
an instant, that she had been married to him.

  He told her that she had been very cruel, and had made him very
unhappy; and Catherine felt acutely the difficulty of her destiny,
which forced her to give pain in such opposite quarters. But she
wished that, instead of reproaches, however tender, he would give
her help; he was certainly wise enough and clever enough to invent
some issue from their troubles. She expressed this belief, and
Morris received the assurance as if he thought it natural; but he
interrogated at first- as was natural too- rather than committed
himself to marking out a course.

  "You should not have made me wait so long," he said. "I don't know
how I have been living; every hour seemed like years. You should
have decided sooner."

  "Decided?" Catherine asked.

  "Decided whether you would keep me or give me up."

  "Oh, Morris," she cried, with a long, tender murmur, "I never
thought of giving you up!"

  "What, then, were you waiting for?" The young man was ardently
logical.

  "I thought my father might- might-" and she hesitated.

  "Might see how unhappy you were?"

  "Oh no. But that he might look at it differently."

  "And now you have sent for me to tell me that at last he does so. Is
that it?"

  This hypothetical optimism gave the poor girl a pang. "No,
Morris," she said, solemnly, "he looks at it still in the same way."

  "Then why have you sent for me?"

  "Because I wanted to see you," cried Catherine, piteously.

  "That's an excellent reason, surely. But did you want to look at
me only? Have you nothing to tell me?"

  His beautiful persuasive eyes were fixed upon her face, and she
wondered what answer would be noble enough to make to such a gaze as
that. For a moment her own eyes took it in, and then "I did want to
look at you," she said, gently. But after this speech, most
inconsistently, she hid her face.

  Morris watched her for a moment attentively, "Will you marry me
tomorrow?" he asked, suddenly.

  "Tomorrow?"

  "Next week, then- any time within a month?"

  "Isn't it better to wait?" said Catherine.

  "To wait for what?"

  She hardly knew for what; but this tremendous leap alarmed her.
"Till we have thought about it a little more."

  He shook his head sadly and reproachfully. "I thought you had been
thinking about it these three weeks. Do you want to turn it over in
your mind for five years? You have given me more than time enough.
My poor girl," he added, in a moment, "you are not sincere."

  Catherine colored from brow to chin, and her eyes filled with tears.
"Oh, how can you say that?" she murmured.

  "Why, you must take me or leave me," said Morris, very reasonably.
"You can't please your father and me both; you must choose between
us."

  "I have chosen you," she said, passionately.

  "Then marry me next week!"

  She stood gazing at him. "Isn't there any other way?"

  "None that I know of for arriving at the same result. If there is, I
should be happy to hear of it."

  Catherine could think of nothing of the kind, and Morris's
luminosity seemed almost pitiless. The only thing she could think of
was that her father might, after all, come round; and she articulated,
with an awkward sense of her helplessness in doing so, a wish that
this miracle might happen.

  "Do you think it is in the least degree likely?" Morris asked.

  "It would be, if he could only know you."

  "He can know me if he will. What is to prevent it?"

  "His ideas, his reasons," said Catherine. "They are so- so
terribly strong." She trembled with the recollection of them yet.

  "Strong!" cried Morris. "I would rather you should think them weak."

  "Oh, nothing about my father is weak," said the girl.

  Morris turned away, walking to the window, where he stood looking
out. "You are terribly afraid of him," he remarked at last.

  She felt no impulse to deny it, because she had no shame in it; for,
if it was no honor to herself, at least it was an honor to him. "I
suppose I must be," she said, simply.

  "Then you don't love me- not as I love you. If you fear your
father more than you love me, then your love is not what I hoped it
was."

  "Ah, my friend!" she said, going to him.

  "Do I fear anything?" he demanded, turning round on her. "For your
sake what am I not ready to face?"

  "You are noble- you are brave!" she answered, stopping short at a
distance that was almost respectful.

  "Small good it does me, if you are so timid."

  "I don't think I am- really," said Catherine.

  "I don't know what you mean by 'really.' It is really enough to make
us miserable."

  "I should be strong enough to wait- to wait a long time."

  "And suppose after a long time your father should hate me worse than
ever?"

  "He wouldn't- he couldn't."

  "He would be touched by my fidelity; is that what you mean? If he is
so easily touched, then why should you be afraid of him?"

  This was much to the point, and Catherine was struck by it. "I
will try not to be," she said. And she stood there submissively, the
image, in advance, of a dutiful and responsible wife. This image could
not fail to recommend itself to Morris Townsend, and he continued to
give proof of the high estimation in which he held her. It could
only have been at the prompting of such a sentiment that he
presently mentioned to her that the course recommended by Mrs.
Penniman was an immediate union, regardless of consequences.

  "Yes, Aunt Penniman would like that," Catherine said, simply, and
yet with a certain shrewdness. It must, however, have been in pure
simplicity and from motives quite untouched by sarcasm, that a few
moments after she went on to say to Morris that her father had given
her a message for him. It was quite on her conscience to deliver
this message, and had the mission been ten times more painful, she
would have as scrupulously performed it. "He told me to tell you- to
tell you very distinctly, and directly from himself- that if I marry
without his consent, I shall not inherit a penny of his fortune. He
made a great point of this. He seemed to think- he seemed to think-"

  Morris flushed, as any young man of spirit might have flushed at
an imputation of baseness. "What did he seem to think?"

  "That it would make a difference."

  "It will make a difference- in many things, We shall be by many
thousands of dollars the poorer; and that is a great difference. But
it will make none in my affection."

  "We shall not want the money," said Catherine, "for you know I
have a good deal myself."

  "Yes, my dear girl, I know you have something. And he can't touch
that."

  "He would never," said Catherine. "My mother left it to me."

  Morris was silent awhile. "He was very positive about this, was he?"
he asked at last. "He thought such a message would annoy me
terribly, and make me throw off the mask, eh?"

  "I don't know what he thought," said Catherine, sadly.

  "Please tell him that I care for his message as much as for that!"
and Morris snapped his fingers sonorously.

  "I don't think I could tell him that."

  "Do you know you sometimes disappoint me," said Morris.

  "I should think I might. I disappoint everyone- Father and Aunt
Penniman."

  "Well, it doesn't matter with me, because I am fonder of you than
they are."

  "Yes, Morris," said the girl, with her imagination- what there was
of it- swimming in this happy truth, which seemed, after all,
invidious to no one.

  "Is it your belief that he will stick to it- stick to it forever- to
this idea of disinheriting you? That your goodness and patience will
never wear out his cruelty?"

  "The trouble is that if I marry you he will think I am not good.
He will think that a proof."

  "Ah, then he will never forgive you!"

  This idea, sharply expressed by Morris's handsome lips, renewed
for a moment to the poor girl's temporarily pacified conscience all
its dreadful vividness. "Oh, you must love me very much!" she cried.

  "There is no doubt of that, my dear," her lover rejoined. "You don't
like that word 'disinherited,'" he added, in a moment.

  "It isn't the money; it is that he should- that he should feel so."

  "I suppose it seems to you a kind of curse?" said Morris. "It must
be very dismal. But don't you think," he went on, presently, "that
if you were to try to be very clever, and to set rightly about it, you
might in the end conjure it away? Don't you think," he continued
further, in a tone of sympathetic speculation, "that a really clever
woman, in your place, might bring him round at last? Don't you think-"

  Here, suddenly, Morris was interrupted; these ingenious inquiries
had not reached Catherine's ears. The terrible word disinheritance,
with all its impressive moral reprobation, was still ringing there-
seemed, indeed, to gather force as it lingered. The mortal chill of
her situation struck more deeply into her childlike heart, and she was
overwhelmed by a feeling of loneliness and danger. But her refuge
was there, close to her, and she put out her hands to grasp it. "Ah,
Morris," she said, with a shudder, "I will marry you as soon as you
please!" and she surrendered herself, leaning her head on his
shoulder.

  "My dear good girl!" he exclaimed, looking down at his prize. And
then he looked up again, rather vaguely, with parted lips and lifted
eyebrows.

                        CHAPTER 21.

  DOCTOR SLOPER very soon imparted his conviction to Mrs. Almond in
the same terms in which he had announced it to himself. "She's going
to stick, by Jove! She's going to stick."

  "Do you mean that she is going to marry him?" Mrs. Almond inquired.

  "I don't know that; but she is not going to break down. She is going
to drag out the engagement, in the hope of making me relent."

  "And shall you not relent?"

  "Shall a geometrical proposition relent? I am not so superficial."

  "Doesn't geometry treat of surfaces?" asked Mrs. Almond, who, as
we know, was clever, smiling.

  "Yes, but it treats of them profoundly. Catherine and her young
man are my surfaces; I have taken their measure."

  "You speak as if it surprised you."

  "It is immense; there will be a great deal to observe."

  "You are shockingly cold-blooded!" said Mrs. Almond.

  "I need to be, with all this hot blood about me. Young Townsend,
indeed, is cool; I must allow him that merit."

  "I can't judge him," Mrs. Almond answered, "but I am not at all
surprised at Catherine."

  "I confess I am a little; she must have been so deucedly divided and
bothered."

  "Say it amuses you outright. I don't see why it should be such a
joke that your daughter adores you."

  "It is the point where the adoration stops that I find it
interesting to fix."

  "It stops where the other sentiment begins."

  "Not at all; that would be simple enough. The two things are
extremely mixed up, and the mixture is extremely odd. It will
produce some third element, and that's what I'm waiting to see. I wait
with suspense- with positive excitement; and that is a sort of emotion
that I didn't suppose Catherine would ever provide for me. I am really
very much obliged to her."

  "She will cling," said Mrs. Almond. "She will certainly cling."

  "Yes, as I say, she will stick."

  "Cling is prettier. That's what those very simple natures always do,
and nothing could be simpler than Catherine. She doesn't take many
impressions; but when she takes one, she keeps it. She is like a
copper kettle that receives a dent: You may polish up the kettle,
but you can't efface the mark."

  "We must try and polish up Catherine," said the doctor. "I will take
her to Europe!"

  "She won't forget him in Europe."

  "He will forget her, then."

  Mrs. Almond looked grave. "Should you really like that?"

  "Extremely," said the doctor.

  Mrs. Penniman, meanwhile, lost little time in putting herself
again in communication with Morris Townsend. She requested him to
favor her with another interview, but she did not on this occasion
select an oyster saloon as the scene of their meeting. She proposed
that he should join her at the door of a certain church after
service on Sunday afternoon; and she was careful not to appoint the
place of worship which she usually visited, and where, as she said,
the congregation would have spied upon her. She picked out a less
elegant resort, and on issuing from its portal at the hour she had
fixed she saw the young man standing apart. She offered him no
recognition until she had crossed the street, and he had followed
her to some distance. Here, with a smile, "Excuse my apparent want
of cordiality," she said. "You know what to believe about that.
Prudence before everything." And on his asking her in what direction
they should walk, "Where we shall be least observed," she murmured.

  Morris was not in high good-humor, and his response to this speech
was not particularly gallant. "I don't flatter myself we shall be much
observed anywhere." Then he turned recklessly toward the center of the
town. "I hope you have come to tell me that he has knocked under,"
he went on.

  "I am afraid I am not altogether a harbinger of good; and yet,
too, I am to a certain extent a messenger of peace. I have been
thinking a great deal, Mr. Townsend," said Mrs. Penniman.

  "You think too much."

  "I suppose I do; but I can't help it, my mind is so terribly active.
When I give myself, I give myself. I pay the penalty in my
headaches, my famous headaches- a perfect circlet of pain! But I carry
it as a queen carries her crown. Would you believe that I have one
now? I wouldn't, however, have missed our rendezvous for anything. I
have something very important to tell you."

  "Well, let's have it," said Morris.

  "I was perhaps a little headlong the other day in advising you to
marry immediately. I have been thinking it over, and now I see it just
a little differently."

  "You seem to have a great many different ways of seeing the same
object."

  "Their number is infinite!" said Mrs. Penniman, in a tone which
seemed to suggest that this convenient faculty was one of her
brightest attributes.

  "I recommend you to take one way, and stick to it," Morris replied.

  "Ah, but it isn't easy to choose. My imagination is never quiet,
never satisfied. It makes me a bad adviser, perhaps, but it makes me a
capital friend."

  "A capital friend who gives bad advice!" said Morris.

  "Not intentionally- and who hurries off, at every risk, to make
the most humble excuses."

  "Well, what do you advise me now?"

  "To be very patient; to watch and wait."

  "And is that bad advice or good?"

  "That is not for me to say," Mrs. Penniman rejoined, with some
dignity. "I only claim it is sincere."

  "And will you come to me next week and recommend something different
and equally sincere?"

  "I may come to you next week, and tell you that I am in the
streets."

  "In the streets?"

  "I have had a terrible scene with my brother, and he threatens, if
anything happens, to turn me out of the house. You know I am a poor
woman."

  Morris had a speculative idea that she had a little property; but he
naturally did not press this.

  "I should be very sorry to see you suffer martyrdom for me," he
said. "But you make your brother out a regular Turk."

  Mrs. Penniman hesitated a little.

  "I certainly do not regard Austin as an orthodox Christian."

  "And am I to wait till he is converted?"

  "Wait at any rate till he is less violent. Bide your time, Mr.
Townsend; remember the prize is great."

  Morris walked along some time in silence, tapping the railings and
gateposts very sharply with his stick.

  "You certainly are devilish inconsistent!" he broke out at last.
"I have already got Catherine to consent to a private marriage."

  Mrs. Penniman was indeed inconsistent, for at this news she gave a
little jump of gratification.

  "Oh, when and where?" she cried. And then she stopped short.

  Morris was a little vague about this.

  "That isn't fixed; but she consents. It's deuced awkward now to back
out."

  Mrs. Penniman, as I say, had stopped short; and she stood there with
her eyes fixed brilliantly on her companion.

  "Mr. Townsend," she proceeded, "shall I tell you something?
Catherine loves you so much that you may do anything."

  This declaration was slightly ambiguous, and Morris opened his eyes.

  "I am happy to hear it. But what do you mean by 'anything'?"

  "You may postpone- you may change about; she won't think the worse
of you."

  Morris stood there still, with his raised eyebrows; then he said,
simply and rather dryly, "Ah!" After this he remarked to Mrs. Penniman
that if she walked so slowly she would attract notice, and he
succeeded, after a fashion, in hurrying her back to the domicile of
which her tenure had become so insecure.

                        CHAPTER 22.

  HE HAD slightly misrepresented the matter in saying that Catherine
had consented to take the great step. We left her just now declaring
that she would burn her ships behind her; but Morris, after having
elicited this declaration, had become conscious of good reasons for
not taking it up. He avoided, gracefully enough, fixing a day,
though he left her under the impression that he had his eye on one.
Catherine may have had her difficulties; but those of her
circumspect suitor are also worthy of consideration. The prize was
certainly great; but it was only to be won by striking the happy
mean between precipitancy and caution. It would be all very well to
take one's jump and trust to Providence; Providence was more
especially on the side of clever people, and clever people were
known by an indisposition to risk their bones.

  The ultimate reward of a union with a young woman who was both
unattractive and impoverished ought to be connected with immediate
disadvantages by some very palpable chain. Between the fear of
losing Catherine and her possible fortune altogether, and the fear
of taking her too soon and finding this possible fortune as void of
actuality as a collection of emptied bottles, it was not comfortable
for Morris Townsend to choose- a fact that should be remembered by
readers disposed to judge harshly of a young man who may have struck
them as making but an indifferently successful use of fine natural
parts. He had not forgotten that in any event Catherine had her own
ten thousand a year; he had devoted an abundance of meditation to this
circumstance. But with his fine parts he rated himself high, and he
had a perfectly definite appreciation of his value, which seemed to
him inadequately represented by the sum I have mentioned. At the
same time he reminded himself that this sum was considerable, that
everything is relative, and that if a modest income is less
desirable than a large one, the complete absence of revenue is nowhere
accounted an advantage.

  These reflections gave him plenty of occupation, and made it
necessary that he should trim his sail. Doctor Sloper's opposition was
the unknown quantity in the problem he had to work out. The natural
way to work it out was by marrying Catherine; but in mathematics there
are many shortcuts, and Morris was not without a hope that he should
yet discover one. When Catherine took him at his word, and consented
to renounce the attempt to mollify her father, he drew back skillfully
enough, as I have said, and kept the wedding day still an open
question. Her faith in his sincerity was so complete that she was
incapable of suspecting that he was playing with her; her trouble just
now was of another kind. The poor girl had an admirable sense of
honor, and from the moment she had brought herself to the point of
violating her father's wish, it seemed to her that she had no right to
enjoy his protection. It was on her conscience that she ought to
live under his roof only so long as she conformed to his wisdom. There
was a great deal of glory in such a position, but poor Catherine
felt that she had forfeited her claim to it. She had cast her lot with
a young man against whom he had solemnly warned her, and broken the
contract under which he provided her with a happy home. She could
not give up the young man, so she must leave the home; and the
sooner the object of her preference offered her another, the sooner
her situation would lose its awkward twist. This was close
reasoning; but it was commingled with an infinite amount of merely
instinctive penitence. Catherine's days, at this time, were dismal,
and the weight of some of her hours was almost more than she could
bear. Her father never looked at her, never spoke to her. He knew
perfectly what he was about, and this was part of a plan. She looked
at him as much as she dared (for she was afraid of seeming to offer
herself to his observation), and she pitied him for the sorrow she had
brought upon him. She held up her head and busied her hands, and
went about her daily occupations; and when the state of things in
Washington Square seemed intolerable, she closed her eyes and indulged
herself with an intellectual vision of the man for whose sake she
had broken a sacred law.

  Mrs. Penniman, of the three persons in Washington Square, had much
the most of the manner that belongs to a great crisis. If Catherine
was quiet, she was quietly quiet, as I may say, and her pathetic
effects, which there was no one to notice, were entirely unstudied and
unintended. If the doctor was stiff and dry, and absolutely
indifferent to the presence of his companions, it was so lightly,
neatly, easily done, that you would have had to know him well to
discover that, on the whole, he rather enjoyed having to be so
disagreeable. But Mrs. Penniman was elaborately reserved and
significantly silent; there was a richer rustle in the very deliberate
movements to which she confined herself, and when she occasionally
spoke, in connection with some very trivial event, she had the air
of meaning something deeper than what she said. Between Catherine
and her father nothing had passed since the evening she went to
speak to him in his study. She had something to say to him- it
seemed to her she ought to say it- but she kept it back for fear of
irritating him. He also had something to say to her; but he was
determined not to speak first. He was interested, as we know, in
seeing how, if she were left to herself, she would "stick." At last
she told him she had seen Morris Townsend again, and that their
relations remained quite the same.

  "I think we shall marry- before very long. And probably,
meanwhile, I shall see him rather often; about once a week- not more."

  The doctor looked at her coldly from head to foot, as if she had
been a stranger. It was the first time his eyes had rested on her
for a week, which was fortunate, if that was to be their expression.
"Why not three times a day?" he asked. "What prevents your meeting
as often as you choose?"

  She turned away a moment; there were tears in her eyes. Then she
said, "It is better once a week."

  "I don't see how it is better. It is as bad as it can be. If you
flatter yourself that I care for little modifications of that sort,
you are very much mistaken. It is as wrong of you to see him once a
week as it would be to see him all day long. Not that it matters to
me, however."

  Catherine tried to follow these words, but they seemed to lead
toward a vague horror from which she recoiled. "I think we shall marry
pretty soon," she repeated, at last.

  Her father gave her his dreadful look again, as if she were
someone else. "Why do you tell me that? It's no concern of mine."

  "Oh, Father," she broke out, "don't you care, even if you do feel
so?"

  "Not a button. Once you marry, it's quite the same to me when, or
where, or why you do it; and if you think to compound for your folly
by hoisting your fly in this way, you may spare yourself the trouble."

  With this he turned away. But the next day he spoke to her of his
own accord, and his manner was somewhat changed. "Shall you be married
within the next four or five months?" he asked.

  "I don't know, Father," said Catherine. "It is not very easy for
us to make up our minds."

  "Put it off, then, for six months, and in the meantime I will take
you to Europe. I should like you very much to go."

  It gave her such delight, after his words of the day before, to hear
that he should "like" her to do something, and that he still had in
his heart any of the tenderness of preference, that she gave a
little exclamation of joy. But then she became conscious that Morris
was not included in this proposal, and that- as regards really
going- she would greatly prefer to remain at home with him. But she
blushed none the less more comfortably than she had done of late.
"It would be delightful to go to Europe," she remarked, with a sense
that the idea was not original, and that her tone was not all it might
be.

  "Very well, then, we will go. Pack up your clothes."

  "I had better tell Mr. Townsend," said Catherine.

  Her father fixed his cold eyes upon her. "If you mean that you had
better ask his leave, all that remains to me is to hope he will give
it."

  The girl was sharply touched by the pathetic ring of the words; it
was the most calculated, the most dramatic little speech the doctor
had ever uttered. She felt that it was a great thing for her, under
the circumstances, to have this fine opportunity of showing him her
respect; and yet there was something else that she felt as well, and
that she presently expressed. "I sometimes think that if I do what you
dislike so much, I ought not to stay with you."

  "To stay with me?"

  "If I live with you, I ought to obey you."

  "If that's your theory, it's certainly mine," said the doctor,
with a dry laugh.

  "But if I don't obey you, I ought not to live with you- to enjoy
your kindness and protection."

  This striking argument gave the doctor a sudden sense of having
underestimated his daughter; it seemed even more than worthy of a
young woman who had revealed the quality of unaggressive obstinacy.
But it displeased him- displeased him deeply, and he signified as
much. "That idea is in very bad taste," he said. "Did you get it
from Mr. Townsend?"

  "Oh no; it's my own," said Catherine, eagerly.

  "Keep it to yourself, then," her father answered, more than ever
determined she should go to Europe.

                        CHAPTER 23.

  IF MORRIS TOWNSEND was not to be included in this journey, no more
was Mrs. Penniman, who would have been thankful for an invitation, but
who (to do her justice) bore her disappointment in a perfectly
ladylike manner. "I should enjoy seeing the works of Raphael and the
ruins- the ruins of the Pantheon," she said to Mrs. Almond, "but, on
the other hand, I shall not be sorry to be alone and at peace for
the next few months in Washington Square. I want rest; I have been
through so much in the last four months." Mrs. Almond thought it
rather cruel that her brother should not take poor Lavinia abroad; but
she easily understood that, if the purpose of his expedition was to
make Catherine forget her lover, it was not in his interest to give
his daughter this young man's best friend as a companion. "If
Lavinia had not been so foolish, she might visit the ruins of the
Pantheon," she said to herself; and she continued to regret her
sister's folly, even though the latter assured her that she had
often heard the relics in question most satisfactorily described by
Mr. Penniman. Mrs. Penniman was perfectly aware that her brother's
motive in undertaking a foreign tour was to lay a trap for Catherine's
constancy; and she imparted this conviction very frankly to her niece.

  "He thinks it will make you forget Morris," she said (she always
called the young man "Morris" now). "Out of sight, out of mind, you
know. He thinks that all the things you will see over there will drive
him out of your thoughts."

  Catherine looked greatly alarmed. "If he thinks that, I ought to
tell him beforehand."

  Mrs. Penniman shook her head. "Tell him afterward, my dear- after he
has had all the trouble and expense. That's the way to serve him." And
she added, in a softer key, that it must be delightful to think of
those who love us among the ruins of the Pantheon.

  Her father's displeasure had cost the girl, as we know, a great deal
of deep-welling sorrow- sorrow of the purest and most generous kind,
without a touch of resentment or rancor; but for the first time, after
he had dismissed with such contemptuous brevity her apology for
being a charge upon him, there was a spark of anger in her grief.
She had felt his contempt; it had scorched her; that speech about
her bad taste had made her ears burn for three days. During this
period she was less considerate; she had an idea- a rather vague
one, but it was agreeable to her sense of injury- that now she was
absolved from penance, and might do what she chose. She chose to write
to Morris Townsend to meet her in the Square and take her to walk
about the town. If she were going to Europe out of respect to her
father, she might at least give herself this satisfaction. She felt in
every way at present more free and more resolute; there was a force
that urged her. Now at last, completely and unreservedly, her
passion possessed her.

  Morris met her at last, and they took a long walk. She told him
immediately what had happened; that her father wished to take her
away- it would be for six months- to Europe; she would do absolutely
what Morris should think best. She hoped inexpressibly that he would
think it best she should stay at home. It was some time before he said
what he thought; he asked, as they walked along, a great many
questions. There was one that especially struck her; it seemed so
incongruous.

  "Should you like to see all those celebrated things over there?"

  "Oh no, Morris!" said Catherine, quite deprecatingly.

  "Gracious heaven, what a dull woman!" Morris exclaimed to himself.

  "He thinks I will forget you," said Catherine, "that all these
things will drive you out of my mind."

  "Well, my dear, perhaps they will."

  "Please don't say that," Catherine answered, gently, as they
walked along. "Poor Father will be disappointed."

  Morris gave a little laugh. "Yes, I verily believe that your poor
father will be disappointed. But you will have seen Europe," he added,
humorously. "What a take in!"

  "I don't care for seeing Europe," Catherine said.

  "You ought to care, my dear; and it may mollify your father."

  Catherine, conscious of her obstinacy, expected little of this,
and could not rid herself of the idea that in going abroad and yet
remaining firm, she should play her father a trick. "Don't you think
it would be a kind of deception?" she asked.

  "Doesn't he want to deceive you?" cried Morris. "It will serve him
right. I really think you had better go."

  "And not be married for so long?"

  "Be married when you come back. You can buy your wedding clothes
in Paris." And then Morris, with great kindness of tone, explained his
view of the matter. It would be a good thing that she should go; it
would put them completely in the right. It would show they were
reasonable, and willing to wait. Once they were so sure of each other,
they could afford to wait- what had they to fear? If there was a
particle of chance that her father would be favorably affected by
her going, that ought to settle it; for, after all, Morris was very
unwilling to be the cause of her being disinherited. It was not for
himself, it was for her and for her children. He was willing to wait
for her; it would be hard, but he could do it. And over there, among
beautiful scenes and noble monuments, perhaps the old gentleman
would be softened; such things were supposed to exert a humanizing
influence. He might be touched by her gentleness, her patience, her
willingness to make any sacrifice but that one; and if she should
appeal to him someday, in some celebrated spot- in Italy, say, in
the evening; in Venice, in a gondola, by moonlight- if she should be a
little clever about it, and touch the right chord, perhaps he would
fold her in his arms, and tell her that he forgave her. Catherine
was immensely struck with this conception of the affair, which
seemed eminently worthy of her lover's brilliant intellect, though she
viewed it askance in so far as it depended upon her own powers of
execution. The idea of being "clever" in a gondola by moonlight
appeared to her to involve elements of which her grasp was not active.
But it was settled between them that she should tell her father that
she was ready to follow him obediently anywhere, making the mental
reservation that she loved Morris Townsend more than ever.

  She informed the doctor she was ready to embark, and he made rapid
arrangements for this event. Catherine had many farewells to make, but
with only two of them are we actively concerned. Mrs. Penniman took
a discriminating view of her niece's journey; it seemed to her very
proper that Mr. Townsend's destined bride should wish to embellish her
mind by a foreign tour.

  "You leave him in good hands," she said, pressing her lips to
Catherine's forehead. (She was very fond of kissing people's
foreheads; it was an involuntary expression of sympathy with the
intellectual part.) "I shall see him often; I shall feel like one of
the vestals of old tending the sacred flame."

  "You behave beautifully about not going with us," Catherine
answered, not presuming to examine this analogy.

  "It is my pride that keeps me up," said Mrs. Penniman, tapping the
body of her dress, which always gave forth a sort of metallic ring.

  Catherine's parting with her lover was short, and few words were
exchanged.

  "Shall I find you just the same when I come back?" she asked; though
the question was not the fruit of skepticism.

  "The same- only more so," said Morris, smiling.

  It does not enter into our scheme to narrate in detail Doctor
Sloper's proceedings in the Eastern Hemisphere. He made the grand tour
of Europe, traveled in considerable splendor, and (as was to have been
expected in a man of his high cultivation) found so much in art and
antiquity to interest him, that he remained abroad, not for six
months, but for twelve. Mrs. Penniman, in Washington Square,
accommodated herself to his absence. She enjoyed her uncontested
dominion in the empty house, and flattered herself that she made it
more attractive to their friends than when her brother was at home. To
Morris Townsend, at least, it would have appeared that she made it
singularly attractive. He was altogether her most frequent visitor,
and Mrs. Penniman was very fond of asking him to tea. He had his
chair- a very easy one- at the fireside in the back parlor (when the
great mahogany sliding doors, with silver knobs and hinges, which
divided this apartment from its more formal neighbor, were closed),
and he used to smoke cigars in the doctor's study, where he often
spent an hour in turning over the curious collections of its absent
proprietor. He thought Mrs. Penniman a goose, as we know; but he was
no goose himself, and, as a young man of luxurious tastes and scanty
resources, he found the house a perfect castle of indolence. It became
for him a club with a single member. Mrs. Penniman saw much less of
her sister than while the doctor was at home; for Mrs. Almond had felt
moved to tell her that she disapproved of her relations with Mr.
Townsend. She had no business to be so friendly to a young man of whom
their brother thought so meanly, and Mrs. Almond was surprised at
her levity in foisting a most deplorable engagement upon Catherine.

  "Deplorable!" cried Lavinia. "He will make her a lovely husband."

  "I don't believe in lovely husbands," said Mrs. Almond. "I only
believe in good ones. If he marries her, and she comes into Austin's
money, they may get on. He will be an idle, amiable, selfish, and,
doubtless, tolerably good-natured fellow. But if she doesn't get the
money, and he finds himself tied to her, heaven have mercy on her!
He will have none. He will hate her for his disappointment, and take
his revenge; he will be pitiless and cruel. Woe betide poor Catherine!
I recommend you to talk a little with his sister; it's a pity
Catherine can't marry her!"

  Mrs. Penniman had no appetite whatever for conversation with Mrs.
Montgomery, whose acquaintance she made no trouble to cultivate; and
the effect of this alarming forecast of her niece's destiny was to
make her think it indeed a thousand pities that Mr. Townsend's
generous nature should be embittered. Bright enjoyment was his natural
element, and how could he be comfortable if there should prove to be
nothing to enjoy? It became a fixed idea with Mrs. Penniman that he
should yet enjoy her brother's fortune, on which she had acuteness
enough to perceive that her own claim was small.

  "If he doesn't leave it to Catherine, it certainly won't be to leave
it to me," she said.

                        CHAPTER 24.

  THE DOCTOR, during the first six months he was abroad, never spoke
to his daughter of their little difference, partly on system, and
partly because he had a great many other things to think about. It was
idle to attempt to ascertain the state of her affections without
direct inquiry, because if she had not had an expressive manner
among the familiar influences of home, she failed to gather
animation from the mountains of Switzerland or the monuments of Italy.
She was always her father's docile and reasonable associate- going
through their sight-seeing in deferential silence, never complaining
of fatigue, always ready to start at the hour he had appointed
overnight, making no foolish criticisms, and indulging in no
refinements of appreciation. "She is about as intelligent as the
bundle of shawls," the doctor said, her main superiority being that,
while the bundle of shawls sometimes got lost, or tumbled out of the
carriage, Catherine was always at her post, and had a firm and ample
seat. But her father had expected this, and he was not constrained
to set down her intellectual limitations as a tourist to sentimental
depression; she had completely divested herself of the characteristics
of a victim, and during the whole time that they were abroad she never
uttered an audible sigh. He supposed she was in correspondence with
Morris Townsend, but he held his peace about it, for he never saw
the young man's letters, and Catherine's own missives were always
given to the courier to post. She heard from her lover with
considerable regularity, but his letters came enclosed in Mrs.
Penniman's; so that, whenever the doctor handed her a packet addressed
in his sister's hand, he was an involuntary instrument of the
passion he condemned. Catherine made this reflection, and six months
earlier she would have felt bound to give him warning; but now she
deemed herself absolved. There was a sore spot in her heart that his
own words had made when once she spoke to him as she thought honor
prompted; she would try and please him as far as she could, but she
would never speak that way again. She read her lover's letters in
secret.

  One day, at the end of the summer, the two travelers found
themselves in a lonely valley of the Alps. They were crossing one of
the passes, and on the long ascent they had got out of the carriage
and had wandered much in advance. After awhile the doctor descried a
footpath which, leading through a transverse valley, would bring
them out, as he justly supposed, at a much higher point of the ascent.
They followed this devious way, and finally lost the path; the
valley proved very wild and rough, and their walk became rather a
scramble. They were good walkers, however, and they took their
adventure easily; from time to time they stopped, that Catherine might
rest; and then she sat upon a stone and looked about her at the
hard-featured rocks and the glowing sky. It was late in the afternoon,
in the last of August; night was coming on, and as they had reached
a great elevation, the air was cold and sharp. In the west there was a
great suffusion of cold red light, which made the sides of the
little valley look only the more rugged and dusky. During one of their
pauses her father left her and wandered away to some high place, at
a distance, to get a view. He was out of sight; she sat there alone in
the stillness, which was just touched by the vague murmur somewhere of
a mountain brook. She thought of Morris Townsend, and the place was so
desolate and lonely that he seemed very far away. Her father
remained absent a long time; she began to wonder what had become of
him. But at last he reappeared, coming toward her in the clear
twilight, and she got up to go on. He made no motion to proceed,
however, but came close to her, as if he had something to say. He
stopped in front of her, and stood looking at her with eyes that had
kept the light of the flushing snow-summits on which they had just
been fixed. Then, abruptly, in a low tone, he asked her an
unexpected question, "Have you given him up?"

  The question was unexpected, but Catherine was only superficially
unprepared.

  "No, Father," she answered.

  He looked at her again for some moments without speaking.

  "Does he write to you?" he asked.

  "Yes, about twice a month."

  The doctor looked up and down the valley, swinging his stick; then
he said to her, in the same low tone, "I am very angry."

  She wondered what he meant- whether he wished to frighten her. If he
did, the place was well chosen: This hard, melancholy dell,
abandoned by the summer light, made her feel her loneliness. She
looked around her, and her heart grew cold; for a moment her fear
was great. But she could think of nothing to say, save to murmur,
gently, "I am sorry."

  "You try my patience," her father went on, "and you ought to know
what I am. I am not a very good man. Though I am very smooth
externally, at bottom I am very passionate; and I assure you I can
be very hard."

  She could not think why he told her these things. Had he brought her
there on purpose, and was it part of a plan? What was the plan?
Catherine asked herself. Was it to startle her suddenly into a
retraction- to take an advantage of her by dread? Dread of what? The
place was ugly and lonely, but the place could do her no harm. There
was a kind of still intensity about her father which made him
dangerous, but Catherine hardly went so far as to say to herself
that it might be part of his plan to fasten his hand- the neat,
fine, supple hand of a distinguished physician- in her throat.
Nevertheless, she receded a step. "I am sure you can be anything you
please," she said; and it was her simple belief.

  "I am very angry," he replied, more sharply.

  "Why has it taken you so suddenly?"

  "It has not taken me suddenly. I have been raging inwardly for the
last six months. But just now this seemed a good place to flare out.
It's so quiet, and we are alone."

  "Yes, it's very quiet," said Catherine, vaguely looking about her.
"Won't you come back to the carriage?"

  "In a moment. Do you mean that in all this time you have not yielded
an inch?"

  "I would if I could, Father; but I can't."

  The doctor looked round him too. "Should you like to be left in such
a place as this, to starve?"

  "What do you mean?" cried the girl.

  "That will be your fate- that's how he will leave you."

  He would not touch her, but he had touched Morris. The warmth came
back to her heart. "That is not true, Father," she broke out, "and you
ought not to say it. It is not right, and it's not true."

  He shook his head slowly. "No, it's not right, because you won't
believe it. But it is true. Come back to the carriage."

  He turned away, and she followed him; he went faster, and was
presently much in advance. But from time to time he stopped, without
turning round, to let her keep up with him, and she made her way
forward with difficulty, her heart beating with the excitement of
having for the first time spoken to him in violence. By this time it
had grown almost dark, and she ended by losing sight of him. But she
kept her course, and after a little, the valley making a sudden
turn, she gained the road, where the carriage stood waiting. In it sat
her father, rigid and silent; in silence, too, she took her place
beside him.

  It seemed to her, later, in looking back upon all this, that for
days afterward not a word had been exchanged between them. The scene
had been a strange one, but it had not permanently affected her
feeling toward her father, for it was natural, after all, that he
should occasionally make a scene of some kind, and he had let her
alone for six months. The strangest part of it was that he had said he
was not a good man; Catherine wondered a good deal what he had meant
by that. The statement failed to appeal to her credence, and it was
not grateful to any resentment that she entertained. Even in the
utmost bitterness that she might feel, it would give her no
satisfaction to think him less complete. Such a saying as that was a
part of his great subtlety- men so clever as he might say anything and
mean anything; and as to his being hard, that surely, in a man, was
a virtue.

  He let her alone for six months more- six months during which she
accommodated herself without a protest to the extension of their tour.
But he spoke again at the end of this time: It was at the very last,
the night before they embarked for New York, in the hotel at
Liverpool. They had been dining together in a great, dim, musty
sitting room; and then the cloth had been removed, and the doctor
walked slowly up and down. Catherine at last took her candle to go
to bed, but her father motioned her to stay.

  "What do you mean to do when you get home?" he asked, while she
stood there with her candle in her hand.

  "Do you mean about Mr. Townsend?"

  "About Mr. Townsend."

  "We shall probably marry."

  The doctor took several turns again while she waited. "Do you hear
from him as much as ever?"

  "Yes, twice a month," said Catherine, promptly.

  "And does he always talk about marriage?"

  "Oh yes; that is, he talks about other things too, but he always
says something about that."

  "I am glad to hear he varies his subjects; his letters might
otherwise be monotonous."

  "He writes beautifully," said Catherine, who was very glad of a
chance to say it.

  "They always write beautifully. However, in a given case that
doesn't diminish the merit. So, as soon as you arrive, you are going
off with him?"

  This seemed a rather gross way of putting it, and something that
there was of dignity in Catherine resented it. "I cannot tell you till
we arrive," she said.

  "That's reasonable enough," her father answered. "That's all I ask
of you- that you do tell me, that you give me definite notice. When
a poor man is to lose his only child, he likes to have an inkling of
it beforehand."

  "Oh, Father, you will not lose me," Catherine said, spilling her
candle wax.

  "Three days before will do," he went on, "if you are in a position
to be positive then. He ought to be very thankful to me, do you
know. I have done a mighty good thing for him in taking you abroad;
your value is twice as great, with all the knowledge and taste that
you have acquired. A year ago, you were perhaps a little limited- a
little rustic; but now you have seen everything, and appreciated
everything, and you will be a most entertaining companion. We have
fattened the sheep for him before he kills it." Catherine turned away,
and stood staring at the blank door. "Go to bed," said her father,
"and as we don't go aboard till noon, you may sleep late. We shall
probably have a most uncomfortable voyage."

                        CHAPTER 25.

  THE VOYAGE was indeed uncomfortable, and Catherine, on arriving in
New York, had not the compensation of "going off," in her father's
phrase, with Morris Townsend. She saw him, however, the day after
she landed; and in the meantime he formed a natural subject of
conversation between our heroine and her aunt Lavinia, with whom,
the night she disembarked, the girl was closeted for a long time
before either lady retired to rest.

  "I have seen a great deal of him," said Mrs. Penniman. "He is not
very easy to know. I suppose you think you know him; but you don't, my
dear. You will someday; but it will only be after you have lived
with him. I may almost say I have lived with him," Mrs. Penniman
proceeded, while Catherine stared. "I think I know him now; I have had
such remarkable opportunities. You will have the same- or, rather, you
will have better," and Aunt Lavinia smiled. "Then you will see what
I mean. It's a wonderful character, full of passion and energy, and
just as true."

  Catherine listened with a mixture of interest and apprehension. Aunt
Lavinia was intensely sympathetic, and Catherine, for the past year,
while she wandered through foreign galleries and churches, and
rolled over the smoothness of posting roads, nursing the thoughts that
never passed her lips, had often longed for the company of some
intelligent person of her own sex. To tell her story to some kind
woman- at moments it seemed to her that this would give her comfort,
and she had more than once been on the point of taking the landlady,
or the nice young person from the dressmaker's, into her confidence.
If a woman had been near her, she would on certain occasions have
treated such a companion to a fit of weeping; and she had an
apprehension that, on her return, this would form her response to Aunt
Lavinia's first embrace. In fact, however, the two ladies had met,
in Washington Square, without tears; and when they found themselves
alone together a certain dryness fell upon the girl's emotion. It came
over her with a greater force that Mrs. Penniman had enjoyed a whole
year of her lover's society, and it was not a pleasure to her to
hear her aunt explain and interpret the young man, speaking of him
as if her own knowledge of him were supreme. It was not that Catherine
was jealous; but her sense of Mrs. Penniman's innocent falsity,
which had lain dormant, began to haunt her again, and she was glad
that she was safely at home. With this, however, it was a blessing
to be able to talk of Morris, to sound his name, to be with a person
who was not unjust to him.

  "You have been very kind to him," said Catherine. "He has written me
that, often. I shall never forget that, Aunt Lavinia."

  "I have done what I could; it has been very little. To let him
come and talk to me, and give him his cup of tea- that was all. Your
aunt Almond thought it was too much, and used to scold me terribly;
but she promised me, at least, not to betray me."

  "To betray you?"

  "Not to tell your father. He used to sit in your father's study,"
said Mrs. Penniman, with a little laugh.

  Catherine was silent a moment. This idea was disagreeable to her,
and she was reminded again, with pain, of her aunt's secretive habits.
Morris, the reader may be informed, had had the tact not to tell her
that he sat in her father's study. He had known her but for a few
months, and her aunt had known her for fifteen years; and yet he would
not have made the mistake of thinking that Catherine would see the
joke of the thing. "I am sorry you made him go into Father's room,"
she said, after awhile.

  "I didn't send him; he went himself. He liked to look at the
books, and at all those things in the glass cases. He knows all
about them; he knows all about everything."

  Catherine was silent again; then, "I wish he had found some
employment," she said.

  "He has found some employment. It's beautiful news, and he told me
to tell you as soon as you arrived. He has gone into partnership
with a commission merchant. It was all settled, quite suddenly, a week
ago."

  This seemed to Catherine indeed beautiful news; it had a fine
prosperous air. "Oh, I'm so glad!" she said; and now, for a moment,
she was disposed to throw herself on Aunt Lavinia's neck.

  "It's much better than being under someone; and he has never been
used to that," Mrs. Penniman went on. "He is just as good as his
partner- they are perfectly equal. You see how right he was to wait. I
should like to know what your father can say now! They have got an
office in Duane Street, and little printed cards; he brought me one to
show me. I have got it in my room, and you shall see it tomorrow.
That's what he said to me the last time he was here, 'You see how
right I was to wait.' He has got other people under him instead of
being a subordinate. He could never be a subordinate; I have often
told him I could never think of him in that way."

  Catherine assented to this proposition, and was very happy to know
that Morris was his own master; but she was deprived of the
satisfaction of thinking that she might communicate this news in
triumph to her father. Her father would care equally little whether
Morris were established in business or transported for life. Her
trunks had been brought into her room, and further reference to her
lover was for a short time suspended, while she opened them and
displayed to her aunt some of the spoils of foreign travel. These were
rich and abundant; and Catherine had brought home a present to
everyone- to everyone save Morris, to whom she had brought simply
her undiverted heart. To Mrs. Penniman she had been lavishly generous,
and Aunt Lavinia spent half an hour in unfolding and folding again,
with little ejaculations of gratitude and taste. She marched about for
some time in a splendid cashmere shawl, which Catherine had begged her
to accept, settling it on her shoulders, and twisting down her head to
see how low the point descended behind.

  "I shall regard it only as a loan," she said. "I will leave it to
you again when I die; or, rather," she added, kissing her niece again,
"I will leave it to your firstborn little girl." And draped in her
shawl, she stood there smiling.

  "You had better wait till she comes," said Catherine.

  "I don't like the way you say that," Mrs. Penniman rejoined, in a
moment. "Catherine, are you changed?"

  "No; I am the same."

  "You have not swerved a line?"

  "I am exactly the same," Catherine repeated, wishing her aunt were a
little less sympathetic.

  "Well, I am glad," and Mrs. Penniman surveyed her cashmere in the
glass. Then, "How is your father?" she asked, in a moment, with her
eyes on her niece. "Your letters were so meager- I could never tell."

  "Father is very well."

  "Ah, you know what I mean," said Mrs. Penniman, with a dignity to
which the cashmere gave a richer effect. "Is he still implacable?"

  "Oh, yes!"

  "Quite unchanged?"

  "He is, if possible, more firm."

  Mrs. Penniman took off her great shawl, and slowly folded it up.
"That is very bad. You had no success with your little project?"

  "What little project?"

  "Morris told me all about it. The idea of turning the tables on him,
in Europe; of watching him, when he was agreeably impressed by some
celebrated sight- he pretends to be so artistic, you know- and then
just pleading with him and bringing him round."

  "I never tried it. It was Morris's idea; but if he had been with
us in Europe, he would have seen that Father was never impressed in
that way. He is artistic- tremendously artistic; but the more
celebrated places we visited, and the more he admired them, the less
use it would have been to plead with him. They seemed only to make him
more determined- more terrible," said poor Catherine. "I shall never
bring him round, and I expect nothing now."

  "Well, I must say," Mrs. Penniman answered, "I never supposed you
were going to give it up."

  "I have given it up. I don't care now."

  "You have grown very brave," said Mrs. Penniman, with a short laugh.
"I didn't advise you to sacrifice your property."

  "Yes, I am braver than I was. You asked me if I had changed; I
have changed in that way. Oh," the girl went on, "I have changed
very much. And it isn't my property. If he doesn't care for it, why
should I?"

  Mrs. Penniman hesitated. "Perhaps he does care for it."

  "He cares for it for my sake, because he doesn't want to injure
me. But he will know- he knows already- how little he need be afraid
about that. Besides," said Catherine, "I have got plenty of money of
my own. We shall be very well off; and now hasn't he got his business?
I am delighted about that business." She went on talking, showing a
good deal of excitement as she proceeded. Her aunt had never seen
her with just this manner, and Mrs. Penniman, observing her, set it
down to foreign travel, which had made her more positive, more mature.
She thought also that Catherine had improved in appearance; she looked
rather handsome. Mrs. Penniman wondered whether Morris Townsend
would be struck with that. While she was engaged in this
speculation, Catherine broke out, with a certain sharpness, "Why are
you so contradictory, Aunt Penniman? You seem to think one thing at
one time, and another at another. A year ago, before I went away,
you wished me not to mind about displeasing Father, and now you seem
to recommend me to take another line. You change about so."

  This attack was unexpected, for Mrs. Penniman was not used, in any
discussion, to seeing the war carried into her own country- possibly
because the enemy generally had doubts of finding subsistence there.
To her own consciousness, the flowery fields of her reason had
rarely been ravaged by a hostile force. It was perhaps on this account
that in defending them she was majestic rather than agile.

  "I don't know what you accuse me of, save of being too deeply
interested in your happiness. It is the first time I have been told
I am capricious. That fault is not what I am usually reproached with."

  "You were angry last year that I wouldn't marry immediately, and now
you talk about my winning my father over. You told me it would serve
him right if he should take me to Europe for nothing. Well, he has
taken me for nothing, and you ought to be satisfied. Nothing is
changed- nothing but my feeling about Father. I don't mind nearly so
much now. I have been as good as I could, but he doesn't care. Now I
don't care either. I don't know whether I have grown bad; perhaps I
have. But I don't care for that. I have come home to be married-
that's all I know. That ought to please you, unless you have taken
up some new idea; you are so strange. You may do as you please, but
you must never speak to me again about pleading with Father. I shall
never plead with him for anything; that is all over. He has put me
off. I am come home to be married."

  This was a more authoritative speech than she had ever heard on
her niece's lips, and Mrs. Penniman was proportionately startled.
She was, indeed, a little awestruck, and the force of the girl's
emotion and resolution left her nothing to reply. She was easily
frightened, and she always carried off her discomfiture by a
concession- a concession which was often accompanied, as in the
present case, by a little nervous laugh.

                        CHAPTER 26.

  IF SHE HAD DISTURBED her niece's temper- she began from this
moment forward to talk a good deal about Catherine's temper, an
article which up to that time had never been mentioned in connection
with our heroine- Catherine had opportunity on the morrow to recover
her serenity. Mrs. Penniman had given her a message from Morris
Townsend to the effect that he would come and welcome her home on
the day after her arrival. He came in the afternoon; but, as may be
imagined, he was not on this occasion made free of Doctor Sloper's
study. He had been coming and going, for the past year, so comfortably
and irresponsibly, that he had a certain sense of being wronged by
finding himself reminded that he must now limit his horizon to the
front parlor, which was Catherine's particular province.

  "I am very glad you have come back," he said. "It makes me very
happy to see you again." And he looked at her, smiling, from head to
foot, though it did not appear afterward that he agreed with Mrs.
Penniman (who, womanlike, went more into details, in thinking her
embellished).

  To Catherine he appeared resplendent; it was some time before she
could believe again that this beautiful young man was her own
exclusive property. They had a great deal of characteristic lovers'
talk- a soft exchange of inquiries and assurances. In these matters
Morris had an excellent grace, which flung a picturesque interest even
over the account of his debut in the commission business- a subject as
to which his companion earnestly questioned him. From time to time
he got up from the sofa where they sat together, and walked about
the room; after which he came back, smiling and passing his hand
through his hair. He was unquiet, as was natural in a young man who
has just been reunited to a long-absent mistress, and Catherine made
the reflection that she had never seen him so excited. It gave her
pleasure, somehow, to note this fact. He asked her questions about her
travels, to some of which she was unable to reply, for she had
forgotten the names of places and the order of her father's journey.
But for the moment she was so happy, so lifted up by the belief that
her troubles at last were over, that she forgot to be ashamed of her
meager answers. It seemed to her now that she could marry him
without the remnant of a scruple, or a single tremor save those that
belonged to joy. Without waiting for him to ask, she told him that her
father had come back in exactly the same state of mind- that he had
not yielded an inch.

  "We must not expect it now," she said, "and we must do without it."

  Morris sat looking and smiling. "My poor, dear girl!" he exclaimed.

  "You mustn't pity me," said Catherine. "I don't mind it now; I am
used to it."

  Morris continued to smile, and then he got up and walked about
again. "You had better let me try him."

  "Try to bring him over? You would only make him worse," Catherine
answered, resolutely.

  "You say that because I managed it so badly before. But I should
manage it differently now. I am much wiser; I have had a year to think
of it. I have more tact."

  "Is that what you have been thinking of for a year?"

  "Much of the time. You see, the idea sticks in my crop. I don't like
to be beaten."

  "How are you beaten if we marry?"

  "Of course I am not beaten on the main issue; but I am, don't you
see, on all the rest of it- on the question of my reputation, of my
relations with your father, of my relations with my own children, if
we should have any."

  "We shall have enough for our children; we shall have enough for
everything. Don't you expect to succeed in business?"

  "Brilliantly, and we shall certainly be very comfortable. But it
isn't of the mere material comfort I speak; it is of the moral
comfort," said Morris, "of the intellectual satisfaction."

  "I have great moral comfort now," Catherine declared, very simply.

  "Of course you have. But with me it is different. I have staked my
pride on proving to your father that he is wrong, and now that I am at
the head of a flourishing business, I can deal with him as an equal, I
have a capital plan- do let me go at him!"

  He stood before her with his bright face, his jaunty air, his
hands in his pockets; and she got up, with her eyes resting on his
own. "Please don't, Morris; please don't," she said; and there was a
certain mild, sad firmness in her tone which he heard for the first
time. "We must ask no favors of him- we must ask nothing more. He
won't relent, and nothing good will come of it. I know it now- I
have a very good reason."

  "And pray what is your reason?"

  She hesitated to bring it out, but at last it came. "He is not
very fond of me."

  "Oh, bother!" cried Morris, angrily.

  "I wouldn't say such a thing without being sure. I saw it, I felt
it, in England, just before he came away. He talked to me one night-
the last night- and then it came over me. You can tell when a person
feels that way. I wouldn't accuse him if he hadn't made me feel that
way. I don't accuse him; I just tell you that that's how it is. He
can't help it; we can't govern our affections. Do I govern mine?
Mightn't he say that to me? It's because he is so fond of my mother,
whom we lost so long ago. She was beautiful, and very, very brilliant;
he is always thinking of her. I am not at all like her; Aunt
Penniman has told me that. Of course it isn't my fault; but neither is
it his fault. All I mean is, it's true; and it's a stronger reason,
for his never being reconciled than simply his dislike for you."

  "Simply'?" cried Morris, with a laugh. "I am much obliged for that."

  "I don't mind about his disliking you now; I mind everything less. I
feel differently; I feel separated from my father."

  "Upon my word," said Morris, "you are a queer family."

  "Don't say that- don't say anything unkind," the girl entreated.
"You must be very kind to me now, because, Morris, because"- and she
hesitated a moment- "because I have done a great deal for you."

  "Oh, I know that, my dear."

  She had spoken up to this moment without vehemence or outward sign
of emotion, gently, reasoningly, only trying to explain. But her
emotion had been ineffectually smothered, and it betrayed itself at
last in the trembling of her voice. "It is a great thing to be
separated like that from your father, when you have worshipped him
before. It has made me very unhappy; or it would have made me so if
I didn't love you. You can tell when a person speaks to you as if-
as if-"

  "As if what?"

  "As if they despised you!" said Catherine, passionately. "He spoke
that way the night before we sailed. It wasn't much, but it was
enough, and I thought of it on the voyage all the time. Then I made up
my mind. I will never ask him for anything again, or expect anything
from him. It would not be natural now. We must be very happy together,
and we must not seem to depend upon his forgiveness. And, Morris,
Morris, you must never despise me!"

  This was an easy promise to make, and Morris made it with fine
effect. But for the moment he undertook nothing more onerous.

                        CHAPTER 27.

  THE DOCTOR of course, on his return, had a good deal of talk with
his sisters. He was at no great pains to narrate his travels or to
communicate his impressions of distant lands to Mrs. Penniman, upon
whom he contented himself with bestowing a memento of his enviable
experience in the shape of a velvet gown. But he conversed with her at
some length about matters nearer home, and lost no time in assuring
her that he was still an inflexible father.

  "I have no doubt you have seen a great deal of Mr. Townsend, and
done your best to console him for Catherine's absence," he said. "I
don't ask you and you needn't deny it. I wouldn't put the question
to you for the world, and expose you to the inconvenience of having
to- a- excogitate an answer. No one has betrayed you, and there has
been no spy upon your proceedings. Elizabeth has told no tales, and
has never mentioned you except to praise your good looks and good
spirits. The thing is simply an inference of my own- an induction,
as the philosophers say. It seems to me likely that you would have
offered an asylum to an interesting sufferer. Mr. Townsend has been
a good deal in the house; there is something in the house that tells
me so. We doctors, you know, end by acquiring fine perceptions, and it
is impressed upon my sensorium that he has sat in these chairs, in a
very easy attitude, and warmed himself at that fire. I don't grudge
him the comfort of it; it is the only one he will ever enjoy at my
expense. It seems likely, indeed, that I shall be able to economize at
his own. I don't know what you may have said to him, or what you may
say hereafter; but I should like you to know that if you have
encouraged him to believe that he will gain anything by hanging on, or
that I have budged a hairbreadth from the position I took up a year
ago, you have played him a trick for which he may exact reparation.
I'm not sure that he may not bring a suit against you. Of course you
have done it conscientiously; you have made yourself believe that I
can be tired out. This is the most baseless hallucination that ever
visited the brain of a genial optimist. I am not in the least tired; I
am as fresh as when I started; I am good for fifty years yet.
Catherine appears not to have budged an inch either; she is equally
fresh; so we are about where we were before. This, however, you know
as well as I. What I wish is simply to give you notice of my own state
of mind. Take it to heart, dear Lavinia. Beware of the just resentment
of a deluded fortune hunter!"

  "I can't say I expected it," said Mrs. Penniman. "And I had a sort
of foolish hope that you would come home without that odious
ironical tone with which you treat the most sacred subjects."

  "Don't undervalue irony; it is often of great use. It is not,
however, always necessary, and I will show you how gracefully I can
lay it aside. I should like to know whether you think Morris
Townsend will hang on?"

  "I will answer you with your own weapons," said Mrs. Penniman.
"You had better wait and see."

  "Do you call such a speech as that one of my own weapons? I never
said anything so rough."

  "He will hang on long enough to make you very uncomfortable, then."

  "My dear Lavinia," exclaimed the doctor, "do you call that irony?
I call it pugilism."

  Mrs. Penniman, however, in spite of her pugilism, was a good deal
frightened, and she took counsel of her fears. Her brother meanwhile
took counsel, with many reservations, of Mrs. Almond, to whom he was
no less generous than to Lavinia, and a good deal more communicative.

  "I suppose she has had him there all the while," he said. "I must
look into the state of my wine. You needn't mind telling me now; I
have already said all I mean to say to her on the subject."

  "I believe he was in the house a good deal," Mrs. Almond answered.
"But you must admit that your leaving Lavinia quite alone was a
great change for her, and that it was natural she should want some
society."

  "I do admit that, and that is why I shall make no row about the
wine; I shall set it down as compensation to Lavinia. She is capable
of telling me that she drank it all herself. Think of the
inconceivable bad taste, in the circumstances, of that fellow making
free with the house- or coming there at all! If that doesn't
describe him, he is indescribable."

  "His plan is to get what he can. Lavinia will have supported him a
year," said Mrs. Almond. "It's so much gained."

  "She will have to support him for the rest of his life, then," cried
the doctor, "but without wine, as they say at the tables d'hote."

  "Catherine tells me he has set up a business, and is making a
great deal of money."

  The doctor stared. "She has not told me that- and Lavinia didn't
deign. Ah!" he cried, "Catherine has given me up. Not that it matters,
for all that the business amounts to."

  "She has not given up Mr. Townsend," said Mrs. Almond. "I saw that
in the first half-minute. She has come home exactly the same."

  "Exactly the same; not a grain more intelligent. She didn't notice a
stick or a stone all the while we were away- not a picture nor a view,
not a statue nor a cathedral."

  "How could she notice? She had other things to think of; they are
never for an instant out of her mind. She touches me very much."

  "She would touch me if she didn't irritate me. That's the effect she
has upon me now. I have tried everything upon her; I really have
been quite merciless. But it is of no use whatever; she is
absolutely glued. I have passed, in consequence, into the
exasperated stage. At first I had a good deal of a certain genial
curiosity about it; I wanted to see if she really would stick. But,
good Lord, one's curiosity is satisfied! I see she is capable of it,
and now she can let go."

  "She will never let go," said Mrs. Almond.

  "Take care, or you will exasperate me too. If she doesn't let go,
she will be shaken off- sent tumbling into the dust. That's a nice
position for my daughter. She can't see that if you are going to be
pushed, you had better jump. And then she will complain of her
bruises."

  "She will never complain," said Mrs. Almond.

  "That I shall object to even more. But the deuce will be that I
can't prevent anything."

  "If she is to have a fall," said Mrs. Almond, with a gentle laugh,
"we must spread as many carpets as we can." And she carried out this
idea by showing a great deal of motherly kindness to the girl.

  Mrs. Penniman immediately wrote to Morris Townsend. The intimacy
between these two was by this time consummate, but I must content
myself with noting but a few of its features. Mrs. Penniman's own
share in it was a singular sentiment, which might have been
misinterpreted, but which in itself was not discreditable to the
poor lady. It was a romantic interest in this attractive and
unfortunate young man, and yet it was not such an interest as
Catherine might have been jealous of. Mrs. Penniman had not a particle
of jealousy of her niece. For herself, she felt as if she were
Morris's mother or sister- a mother or sister of an emotional
temperament- and she had an absorbing desire to make him comfortable
and happy. She had striven to do so during the year that her brother
left her an open field, and her efforts had been attended with the
success that has been pointed out. She had never had a child of her
own, and Catherine, whom she had done her best to invest with the
importance that would naturally belong to a youthful Penniman, had
only partly rewarded her zeal. Catherine, as an object of affection
and solicitude, had never had that picturesque charm which (as it
seemed to her) would have been a natural attribute of her own progeny.
Even the maternal passion in Mrs. Penniman would have been romantic
and factitious, and Catherine was not constituted to inspire a
romantic passion. Mrs. Penniman was as fond of her as ever, but she
had grown to feel that with Catherine she lacked opportunity.
Sentimentally speaking, therefore, she had (though she had not
disinherited her niece) adopted Morris Townsend, who gave her
opportunity in abundance. She would have been very happy to have a
handsome and tyrannical son, and would have taken an extreme
interest in his love affairs. This was the light in which she had come
to regard Morris, who had conciliated her at first, and made his
impression by his delicate and calculated deference- a sort of
exhibition to which Mrs. Penniman was particularly sensitive. He had
largely abated his deference afterward, for he economized his
resources, but the impression was made, and the young man's very
brutality came to have a sort of filial value. If Mrs. Penniman had
had a son, she would probably have been afraid of him, and at this
stage of our narrative she was certainly afraid of Morris Townsend.
This was one of the results of his domestication in Washington Square.
He took his ease with her- as, for that matter, he would certainly
have done with his own mother.

                        CHAPTER 28.

  THE LETTER was a word of warning; it informed him that the doctor
had come home more impracticable than ever. She might have reflected
that Catherine would supply him with all the information he needed
on this point; but we know that Mrs. Penniman's reflections were
rarely just; and, moreover, she felt that it was not for her to depend
on what Catherine might do. I have said that her young friend took his
ease with her, and it is an illustration of the fact that he made no
answer to her letter. He took note of it amply; but he lighted his
cigar with it, and he waited, in tranquil confidence that he should
receive another. "His state of mind really freezes my blood," Mrs.
Penniman had written, alluding to her brother; and it would have
seemed that upon this statement she could hardly improve.
Nevertheless, she wrote again, expressing herself with the aid of a
different figure. "His hatred of you burns with a lurid flame- the
flame that never dies," she wrote. "But it doesn't light up the
darkness of your future. If my affection could do so, all the years of
your life would be an eternal sunshine. I can extract nothing from C.;
she is so terribly secretive, like her father. She seems to expect
to be married very soon, and has evidently made preparations in
Europe- quantities of clothing, ten pairs of shoes, etc. My dear
friend, you cannot set up in married life simply with a few pairs of
shoes, can you? Tell me what you think of this. I am intensely anxious
to see you, I have so much to say. I miss you dreadfully; the house
seems so empty without you. What is the news downtown? Is the business
extending? That dear little business. I think it's so brave of you!
Couldn't I come to your office- just for three minutes? I might pass
for a customer- is that what you call them? I might come in to buy
something- some shares or some railroad things. Tell me what you think
of that plan. I would carry a little reticule, like a woman of the
people."

  In spite of the suggestion about the reticule, Morris appeared to
think poorly of the plan, for he gave Mrs. Penniman no encouragement
whatever to visit his office, which he had already represented to
her as a place peculiarly and unnaturally difficult to find. But as
she persisted in desiring an interview- up to the last, after months
of intimate colloquy, she called these meetings "interviews"- she
agreed that they should take a walk together, and was even kind enough
to leave his office for this purpose during the hours at which
business might have been supposed to be liveliest. It was no
surprise to him, when they met at a street corner, in a region of
empty lots and undeveloped pavements (Mrs. Penniman being attired as
much as possible like a "woman of the people"), to find that, in spite
of her urgency, what she chiefly had to convey to him was the
assurance of her sympathy. Of such assurances, however, he had already
a voluminous collection, and it would not have been worth his while to
forsake a fruitful avocation merely to hear Mrs. Penniman say, for the
thousandth time, that she had made his cause her own. Morris had
something of his own to say. It was not an easy thing to bring out,
and while he turned it over, the difficulty made him acrimonious.

  "Oh yes, I know perfectly that he combines the properties of a
lump of ice and a red-hot coal," he observed. "Catherine has made it
thoroughly clear, and you have told me so till I am sick of it. You
needn't tell me again; I am perfectly satisfied. He will never give us
a Penny; I regard that as mathematically proved."

  Mrs. Penniman at this point had an inspiration.

  "Couldn't you bring a lawsuit against him?" She wondered that this
simple expedient had never occurred to her before.

  "I will bring a lawsuit against you," said Morris, "if you ask me
any more such aggravating questions. A man should know when he is
beaten," he added, in a moment. "I must give her up!"

  Mrs. Penniman received this declaration in silence, though it made
her heart beat a little. It found her by no means unprepared, for
she had accustomed herself to the thought that, if Morris should
decidedly not be able to get her brother's money, it would not do
for him to marry Catherine without it. "It would not do," was a
vague way of putting the thing; but Mrs. Penniman's natural
affection completed the idea, which, though it had not as yet been
so crudely expressed between them as in the form that Morris had
just given it, had nevertheless been implied so often, in certain easy
intervals of talk, as he sat stretching his legs in the doctor's
well-stuffed armchairs, that she had grown first to regard it with
an emotion which she flattered herself was philosophic, and then to
have a secret tenderness for it. The fact that she kept her tenderness
secret proves, of course, that she was ashamed of it; but she
managed to blink her shame by reminding herself that she was, after
all, the official protector of her niece's marriage. Her logic would
scarcely have passed muster with the doctor. In the first place,
Morris must get the money, and she would help him to it. In the
second, it was plain it would never come to him, and it would be a
grievous pity he should marry without it- a young man who might so
easily find something better. After her brother had delivered himself,
on his return from Europe, of that incisive little address that has
been quoted, Morris's cause seemed so hopeless that Mrs. Penniman
fixed her attention exclusively upon the latter branch of her
argument. If Morris had been her son, she would certainly have
sacrificed Catherine to a superior conception of his future; and to be
ready to do so, as the case stood, was therefore even a finer degree
of devotion. Nevertheless, it cheeked her breath a little to have
the sacrificial knife, as it were, suddenly thrust into her hand.

  Morris walked along a moment, and then he repeated, harshly, "I must
give her up!"

  "I think I understand you," said Mrs. Penniman, gently.

  "I certainly say it distinctly enough- brutally and vulgarly
enough."

  He was ashamed of himself, and his shame was uncomfortable; and as
he was extremely intolerant of discomfort, he felt vicious and
cruel. He wanted to abuse somebody, and he began, cautiously- for he
was always cautious- with himself.

  "Couldn't you take her down a little?" he asked.

  "Take her down?"

  "Prepare her- try and ease me off."

  Mrs. Penniman stopped, looking at him very solemnly.

  "My poor Morris, do you know how much she loves you?"

  "No, I don't. I don't want to know. I have always tried to keep from
knowing. It would be too painful."

  "She will suffer much," said Mrs. Penniman.

  "You must console her. If you are as good a friend to me as you
pretend to be, you will manage it."

  Mrs. Penniman shook her head sadly.

  "You talk of my 'pretending' to like you; but I can't pretend to
hate you. I can only tell her I think very highly of you; and how will
that console her for losing you?"

  "The doctor will help you. He will be delighted at the thing being
broken off; and as he is a knowing fellow, he will invent something to
comfort her."

  "He will invent a new torture," cried Mrs. Penniman. "Heaven deliver
her from her father's comfort! It will consist of his crowing over
her, and saying, 'I always told you so!'"

  Morris colored a most uncomfortable red.

  "If you don't console her any better than you console me, you
certainly won't be of much use. It's a damned disagreeable
necessity; I feel it extremely, and you ought to make it easy for me."

  "I will be your friend for life," Mrs. Penniman declared.

  "Be my friend now!" and Morris walked on.

  She went with him; she was almost trembling.

  "Should you like me to tell her?" she asked.

  "You mustn't tell her, but you can- you can-" And he hesitated,
trying to think what Mrs. Penniman could do. "You can explain to her
why it is. It's because I can't bring myself to step in between her
and her father- to give him the pretext he grasps at so eagerly
(it's a hideous sight!) for depriving her of her rights."

  Mrs. Penniman felt with remarkable promptitude the charm of this
formula.

  "That's so like you," she said. "It's so finely felt."

  Morris gave his stick an angry swing.

  "Oh damnation!" he exclaimed, perversely.

  Mrs. Penniman, however, was not discouraged.

  "It may turn out better than you think. Catherine is, after all,
so very peculiar." And she thought she might take it upon herself to
assure him that, whatever happened, the girl would be very quiet-
she wouldn't make a noise. They extended their walk, and while they
proceeded Mrs. Penniman took upon herself other things besides, and
ended by having assumed a considerable burden; Morris being ready
enough, as may be imagined, to put everything off upon her. But he was
not for a single instant the dupe of her blundering alacrity; he
knew that of what she promised she was competent to perform but an
insignificant fraction, and the more she professed her willingness
to serve him, the greater fool he thought her.

  "What will you do if you don't marry her?" she ventured to inquire
in the course of this conversation.

  "Something brilliant," said Morris. "Shouldn't you like me to do
something brilliant?"

  The idea gave Mrs. Penniman exceeding pleasure.

  "I shall feel sadly taken in if you don't."

  "I shall have to, to make up for this. This isn't at all
brilliant, you know."

  Mrs. Penniman mused a little, as if there might be some way of
making out that it was; but she had to give up the attempt, and, to
carry off the awkwardness of failure, she risked a new inquiry.

  "Do you mean- do you mean another marriage?"

  Morris greeted this question with a reflection which was hardly
the less impudent from being inaudible. "Surely women are more crude
than men!" And then he answered, audibly, "Never in the world!"

  Mrs. Penniman felt disappointed and snubbed, and she relieved
herself in a little vaguely sarcastic cry. He was certainly perverse.

  "I give her up, not for another woman, but for a wider career,"
Morris announced.

  This was very grand; but still Mrs. Penniman, who felt that she
had exposed herself, was faintly rancorous.

  "Do you mean never to come to see her again?" she asked, with some
sharpness.

  "Oh no, I shall come again; but what is the use of dragging it
out? I have been four times since she came back, and it's terribly
awkward work. I can't keep it up indefinitely; she oughtn't to
expect that, you know. A woman should never keep a man dangling," he
added, finely.

  "Ah, but you must have your last parting!" urged his companion, in
whose imagination the idea of last partings occupied a place
inferior in dignity only to that of first meetings.

                        CHAPTER 29.

  HE CAME AGAIN, without managing the last parting; and again and
again, without finding that Mrs. Penniman had as yet done much to pave
the path of retreat with flowers. It was devilish awkward, as he said,
and he felt a lively animosity for Catherine's aunt, who, as he had
now quite formed the habit of saying to himself, had dragged him
into the mess, and was bound in common charity to get him out of it.
Mrs. Penniman, to tell the truth, had, in the seclusion of her own
apartment- and, I may add, amid the suggestiveness of Catherine's,
which wore in those days the appearance of that of a young lady laying
out her trousseau- Mrs. Penniman had measured her responsibilities,
and taken fright at their magnitude. The task of preparing Catherine
and easing off Morris presented difficulties which increased in the
execution, and even led the impulsive Lavinia to ask herself whether
the modification of the young man's original project had been
conceived in a happy spirit. A brilliant future, a wider career, a
conscience exempt from the reproach of interference between a young
lady and her natural rights- these excellent things might be too
troublesomely purchased. From Catherine herself Mrs. Penniman received
no assistance whatever; the poor girl was apparently without suspicion
of her danger. She looked at her lover with eyes of undiminished
trust, and though she had less confidence in her aunt than in a
young man with whom she had exchanged so many tender vows, she gave
her no handle for explaining or confessing. Mrs. Penniman, faltering
and wavering, declared Catherine was very stupid, put off the great
scene, as she would have called it, from day to day, and wandered
about, very uncomfortably, with her unexploded bomb in her hands.
Morris's own scenes were very small ones just now; but even these were
beyond his strength. He made his visits as brief as possible, and,
while he sat with his mistress, found terribly little to talk about.
She was waiting for him, in vulgar parlance, to name the day; and so
long as he was unprepared to be explicit on this point, it seemed a
mockery to pretend to talk about matters more abstract. She had no
airs and no arts; she never attempted to disguise her expectancy.
She was waiting on his good pleasure, and would wait modestly and
patiently; his hanging back at this supreme time might appear strange,
but of course he must have a good reason for it. Catherine would
have made a wife of the gentle, old-fashioned pattern- regarding
reasons as favors and windfalls, but no more expecting one every day
than she would have expected a bouquet of camellias. During the period
of her engagement, however, a young lady even of the most slender
pretensions counts upon more bouquets than at other times; and there
was a want of perfume in the air at this moment which at last
excited the girl's alarm.

  "Are you sick?" she asked of Morris. "You seem so restless, and
you look pale."

  "I am not at all well," said Morris; and it occurred to him that, if
he could only make her pity him enough, he might get off.

  "I am afraid you are overworked; you oughtn't to work so much."

  "I must do that." And then he added, with a sort of calculated
brutality, "I don't want to owe you everything."

  "Ah, how can you say that?"

  "I am too proud," said Morris.

  "Yes- you are too proud."

  "Well, you must take me as I am," he went on. "You can never
change me."

  "I don't want to change you," she said, gently. "I will take you
as you are." And she stood looking at him.

  "You know people talk tremendously about a man's marrying a rich
girl," Morris remarked. "It's excessively disagreeable."

  "But I am not rich," said Catherine.

  "You are rich enough to make me talked about."

  "Of course you are talked about. It's an honor."

  "It's an honor I could easily dispense with."

  She was on the point of asking him whether it was not a compensation
for this annoyance that the poor girl who had the misfortune to
bring it upon him loved him so dearly and believed in him so truly;
but she hesitated, thinking that this would perhaps seem an exacting
speech, and while she hesitated, he suddenly left her.

  The next time he came, however, she brought it out, and she told him
again that he was too proud. He repeated that he couldn't change,
and this time she felt the impulse to say that with a little effort he
might change.

  Sometimes he thought that if he could only make a quarrel with her
it might help him; but the question was how to quarrel with a young
woman who had such treasures of concession. "I suppose you think the
effort is all on your side," he broke out. "Don't you believe that I
have my own effort to make?"

  "It's all yours now," she said. "My effort is finished and done
with."

  "Well, mine is not."

  "We must bear things together," said Catherine. "That's what we
ought to do."

  Morris attempted a natural smile. "There are some things which we
can't very well bear together- for instance, separation."

  "Why do you speak of separation?"

  "Ah, you don't like it; I knew you wouldn't."

  "Where are you going, Morris?" she suddenly asked.

  He fixed his eye on her a moment, and for a part of that moment
she was afraid of it. "Will you promise not to make a scene?"

  "A scene- do I make scenes?"

  "All women do!" said Morris, with the tone of large experience.

  "I don't. Where are you going?"

  "If I should say I was going away on business, should you think it
very strange?"

  She wondered a moment, gazing at him. "Yes- no. Not if you will take
me with you."

  "Take you with me- on business?"

  "What is your business? Your business is to be with me."

  "I don't earn my living with you," said Morris. "Or, rather," he
cried, with a sudden inspiration, "that's just what I do- or what
the world says I do!"

  This ought perhaps to have been a great stroke, but it miscarried.
"Where are you going?" Catherine simply repeated.

  "To New Orleans- about buying some cotton."

  "I am perfectly willing to go to New Orleans," Catherine said.

  "Do you suppose I would take you to a nest of yellow fever?" cried
Morris. "Do you suppose I would expose you at such a time as this?"

  "If there is yellow fever, why should you go? Morris, you must not
go."

  "It is to make six thousand dollars," said Morris. "Do you grudge me
that satisfaction?"

  "We have no need of six thousand dollars. You think too much about
money."

  "You can afford to say that. This is a great chance; we heard of
it last night." And he explained to her in what the chance
consisted; and told her a long story, going over more than once
several of the details, about the remarkable stroke of business
which he and his partner had planned between them.

  But Catherine's imagination, for reasons best known to herself,
absolutely refused to be fired. "If you can go to New Orleans, I can
go," she said. "Why shouldn't you catch yellow fever quite as easily
as I? I am every bit as strong as you, and not in the least afraid
of any fever. When we were in Europe we were in very unhealthy places;
my father used to make me take some pills. I never caught anything,
and I never was nervous. What will be the use of six thousand
dollars if you die of a fever? When persons are going to be married
they oughtn't to think so much about business. You shouldn't think
about cotton; you should think about me. You can go to New Orleans
some other time- there will always be plenty of cotton. It isn't the
moment to choose. We have waited too long already." She spoke more
forcibly and volubly than he had ever heard her, and she held his
arm in her two hands.

  "You said you wouldn't make a scene," cried Morris. "I call this a
scene."

  "It's you that are making it. I have never asked you anything
before. We have waited too long already." And it was a comfort to
her to think that she had hitherto asked so little; it seemed to
make her right to insist the greater now.

  Morris bethought himself a little. "Very well, then; we won't talk
about it anymore. I will transact my business by letter." And he began
to smooth his hat, as if to take leave.

  "You won't go?" and she stood looking up at him.

  He could not give up his idea of provoking a quarrel; it was so much
the simplest way. He bent his eyes on her upturned face with the
darkest frown he could achieve. "You are not discreet; you mustn't
bully me."

  But, as usual, she conceded everything. "No, I am not discreet; I
know I am too pressing. But isn't it natural? It is only for a
moment."

  "In a moment you may do a great deal of harm. Try and be calmer
the next time I come."

  "When will you come?"

  "Do you want to make conditions?" Morris asked. "I will come next
Saturday."

  "Come tomorrow," Catherine begged. "I want you to come tomorrow. I
will be very quiet," she added; and her agitation had by this time
become so great that the assurance was not unbecoming. A sudden fear
had come over her; it was like the solid conjunction of a dozen
disembodied doubts, and her imagination, at a single bound, had
traversed an enormous distance. All her being, for the moment, was
centered in the wish to keep him in the room.

  Morris bent his head and kissed her forehead. "When you are quiet,
you are perfection," he said, "but when you are violent, you are not
in character."

  It was Catherine's wish that there should be no violence about her
save the beating of her heart, which she could not help; and she
went on, as gently as possible, "Will you promise to come tomorrow?"

  "I said Saturday!" Morris answered, smiling. He tried a frown at one
moment, a smile at another; he was at his wit's end.

  "Yes, Saturday too," she answered, trying to smile. "But tomorrow
first." He was going to the door, and she went with him quickly. She
leaned her shoulder against it; it seemed to her that she would do
anything to keep him.

  "If I am prevented from coming tomorrow, you will say I have
deceived you," he said.

  "How can you be prevented? You can come if you will."

  "I am a busy man- I am not a dangler!" cried Morris, sternly.

  His voice was so hard and unnatural that, with a helpless look at
him, she turned away; and then he quickly laid his hand on the
doorknob. He felt as if he were absolutely running away from her.
But in an instant she was close to him again, and murmuring in a
tone none the less penetrating for being low, "Morris, you are going
to leave me."

  "Yes, for a little while."

  "For how long?"

  "Till you are reasonable again."

  "I shall never be reasonable, in that way." And she tried to keep
him longer; it was almost a struggle. "Think of what I have done!" she
broke out. "Morris, I have given up everything."

  "You shall have everything back."

  "You wouldn't say that if you didn't mean something. What is it?
What has happened? What have I done? What has changed you?"

  "I will write to you- that is better," Morris stammered.

  "Ah, you won't come back!" she cried, bursting into tears.

  "Dear Catherine," he said, "don't believe that. I promise you that
you shall see me again." And he managed to get away, and to close
the door behind him.

                        CHAPTER 30.

  IT WAS ALMOST the last outbreak of passion of her life; at least,
she never indulged in another that the world knew anything about.
But this one was long and terrible; she flung herself on the sofa
and gave herself up to her grief She hardly knew what had happened;
ostensibly she had only had a difference with her lover, as other
girls had had before, and the thing was not only not a rupture, but
she was under no obligation to regard it even as a menace.
Nevertheless, she felt a wound, even if he had not dealt it; it seemed
to her that a mask had suddenly fallen from his face. He had wished to
get away from her; he had been angry and cruel, and said strange
things, with strange looks. She was smothered and stunned; she
buried her head in the cushions, sobbing and talking to herself. But
at last she raised herself, with the fear that either her father or
Mrs. Penniman would come in; and then she sat there, staring before
her, while the room grew darker. She said to herself that perhaps he
would come back to tell her he had not meant what he said; and she
listened for his ring at the door, trying to believe that this was
probable. A long time passed, but Morris remained absent; the
shadows gathered; the evening settled down on the meager elegance of
the light, clear-colored room; the fire went out. When it had grown
dark, Catherine went to the window and looked out; she stood there for
half an hour, on the mere chance that he would come up the steps. At
last she turned away, for she saw her father come in. He had seen
her at the window looking out, and he stopped a moment at the bottom
of the white steps, and gravely, with an air of exaggerated
courtesy, lifted his hat to her. The gesture was so incongruous to the
condition she was in, this stately tribute of respect to a poor girl
despised and forsaken was so out of place, that the thing gave her a
kind of horror, and she hurried away to her room. It seemed to her
that she had given Morris up.

  She had to show herself half an hour later, and she was sustained at
table by the immensity of her desire that her father should not
perceive that anything had happened. This was a great help to her
afterward, and it served her (though never as much as she supposed)
from the first. On this occasion Doctor Sloper was rather talkative.
He told a great many stories about a wonderful poodle that he had seen
at the house of an old lady whom he visited professionally.
Catherine not only tried to appear to listen to the anecdotes of the
poodle, but she endeavored to interest herself in them, so as not to
think of her scene with Morris. That perhaps was an hallucination;
he was mistaken, she was jealous; people didn't change like that
from one day to another. Then she knew that she had had doubts before-
strange suspicions, that were at once vague and acute- and that he had
been different ever since her return from Europe: whereupon she
tried again to listen to her father, who told a story so remarkably
well. Afterward she went straight to her own room; it was beyond her
strength to undertake to spend the evening with her aunt. All the
evening, alone, she questioned herself. Her trouble was terrible;
but was it a thing of her imagination, engendered by an extravagant
sensibility, or did it represent a clear-cut reality, and had the
worst that was possible actually come to pass? Mrs. Penniman, with a
degree of tact that was as unusual as it was commendable, took the
line of leaving her alone. The truth is, that her suspicions having
been aroused, she indulged a desire, natural to a timid person, that
the explosion should be localized. So long as the air still vibrated
she kept out of the way.

  She passed and repassed Catherine's door several times in the course
of the evening, as if she expected to hear a plaintive moan behind it.
But the room remained perfectly still; and accordingly the last
thing before retiring to her own couch, she applied for admittance.
Catherine was sitting up, and had a book that she pretended to be
reading. She had no wish to go to bed, for she had no expectation of
sleeping. After Mrs. Penniman had left her she sat up half the
night, and she offered her visitor no inducement to remain. Her aunt
came stealing in very gently, and approached her with great solemnity.

  "I am afraid you are in trouble, my dear. Can I do anything to
help you?"

  "I am not in any trouble whatever, and do not need any help," said
Catherine, fibbing roundly, and proving thereby that not only our
faults, but our most involuntary misfortunes, tend to corrupt our
morals.

  "Has nothing happened to you?"

  "Nothing whatever."

  "Are you very sure, dear?"

  "Perfectly sure."

  "And can I really do nothing for you?"

  "Nothing, Aunt, but kindly leave me alone," said Catherine.

  Mrs. Penniman, though she had been afraid of too warm a welcome
before, was now disappointed at so cold a one; and in relating
afterward, as she did to many persons, and with considerable
variations of detail, the history of the termination of her niece's
engagement, she was usually careful to mention that the young lady, on
a certain occasion, had "hustled" her out of the room. It was
characteristic of Mrs. Penniman that she related this fact, not in the
least out of malignity to Catherine, whom she very sufficiently
pitied, but simply from a natural disposition to embellish any subject
that she touched.

  Catherine, as I have said, sat up half the night, as if she still
expected to hear Morris Townsend ring at the door. On the morrow
this expectation was less unreasonable; but it was not gratified by
the reappearance of the young man. Neither had he written; there was
not a word of explanation or reassurance. Fortunately for Catherine,
she could take refuge from her excitement, which had now become
intense, in her determination that her father should see nothing of
it. How well she deceived her father we shall have occasion to
learn; but her innocent arts were of little avail before a person of
the rare perspicacity of Mrs. Penniman. This lady easily saw that
she was agitated, and if there was any agitation going forward, Mrs.
Penniman was not a person to forfeit her natural share in it. She
returned to the charge the next evening, and requested her niece to
confide in her- to unburden her heart. Perhaps she should be able to
explain certain things that now seemed dark, and that she knew more
about than Catherine supposed. If Catherine had been frigid the
night before, today she was haughty.

  "You are completely mistaken, and I have not the least idea what you
mean. I don't know what you are trying to fasten on me, and I have
never had less need of anyone's explanations in my life."

  In this way the girl delivered herself, and from hour to hour kept
her aunt at bay. From hour to hour Mrs. Penniman's curiosity grew. She
would have given her little finger to know what Morris had said and
done, what tone he had taken, what pretext he had found. She wrote
to him, naturally, to request an interview; but she received, as
naturally, no answer to her petition. Morris was not in a writing
mood; for Catherine had addressed him two short notes which met with
no acknowledgment. These notes were so brief that I may give them
entire. "Won't you give me some sign that you didn't mean to be so
cruel as you seemed on Tuesday?"- that was the first; the other was
a little longer. "If I was unreasonable or suspicious on Tuesday- if I
annoyed you or troubled you in any way- I beg your forgiveness, and
I promise never again to be so foolish. I am punished enough, and I
don't understand. Dear Morris, you are killing me!" These notes were
dispatched on the Friday and Saturday; but Saturday and Sunday
passed without bringing the poor girl the satisfaction she desired.
Her punishment accumulated; she continued to bear it, however, with
a good deal of superficial fortitude. On Saturday morning, the doctor,
who had been watching in silence, spoke to his sister Lavinia.

  "The thing has happened- the scoundrel has backed out!"

  "Never!" cried Mrs. Penniman, who had bethought herself what she
should say to Catherine, but was not provided with a line of defense
against her brother, so that indignant negation was the only weapon in
her hands.

  "He has begged for a reprieve, then, if you like that better!"

  "It seems to make you very happy that your daughter's affections
have been trifled with."

  "It does," said the doctor, "for I had foretold it! It's a great
pleasure to be in the right."

  "Your pleasures make one shudder!" his sister exclaimed.

  Catherine went rigidly through her usual occupations; that is, to
the point of going with her aunt to church on Sunday morning. She
generally went to afternoon service as well; but on this occasion
her courage faltered, and she begged of Mrs. Penniman to go without
her.

  "I am sure you have a secret," said Mrs. Penniman, with great
significance, looking at her rather grimly.

  "If I have, I shall keep it," Catherine answered, turning away.

  Mrs. Penniman started for church; but before she had arrived, she
stopped and turned back, and before twenty minutes had elapsed she
reentered the house, looked into the empty parlors, and then went
upstairs and knocked at Catherine's door. She got no answer; Catherine
was not in her room, and Mrs. Penniman presently ascertained that
she was not in the house. "She has gone to him! She has fled!" Lavinia
cried, clasping her hands with admiration and envy. But she soon
perceived that Catherine had taken nothing with her- all her
personal property in her room was intact- and then she jumped at the
hypothesis that the girl had gone forth, not in tenderness, but in
resentment. "She has followed him to his own door! She has burst
upon him in his own apartment!" It was in these terms that Mrs.
Penniman depicted to herself her niece's errand, which, viewed in this
light, gratified her sense of the picturesque only a shade less
strongly than the idea of a clandestine marriage. To visit one's
lover, with tears and reproaches, at his own residence, was an image
so agreeable to Mrs. Penniman's mind that she felt a sort of aesthetic
disappointment at its lacking, in this case, the harmonious
accompaniments of darkness and storm. A quiet Sunday afternoon
appeared an inadequate setting for it; and, indeed, Mrs. Penniman
was quite out of humor with the conditions of the time, which passed
very slowly as she sat in the front parlor, in her bonnet and her
cashmere shawl, awaiting Catherine's return.

  This event at last took place. She saw her- at the window- mount the
steps, and she went to await her in the hall, where she pounced upon
her as soon as she had entered the house, and drew her into the
parlor, closing the door with solemnity. Catherine was flushed, and
her eye was bright. Mrs. Penniman hardly knew what to think.

  "May I venture to ask where you have been?" she demanded.

  "I have been to take a walk," said Catherine. "I thought you had
gone to church."

  "I did go to church; but the service was shorter than usual. And
pray where did you walk?"

  "I don't know!" said Catherine.

  "Your ignorance is most extraordinary! Dear Catherine, you can trust
me."

  "What am I to trust you with?"

  "With your secret- your sorrow."

  "I have no sorrow!" said Catherine, fiercely.

  "My poor child," Mrs. Penniman insisted, "you can't deceive me. I
know everything. I have been requested to- a- to converse with you."

  "I don't want to converse!"

  "It will relieve you. Don't you know Shakespeare's lines- 'The grief
that does not speak'! My dear girl, it is better as it is!"

  "What is better?" Catherine asked.

  She was really too perverse. A certain amount of perversity was to
be allowed for in a young lady whose lover had thrown her over; but
not such an amount as would prove inconvenient to his apologists.
"That you should be reasonable," said Mrs. Penniman, with some
sternness, "that you should take counsel of worldly prudence, and
submit to practical considerations; that you should agree to- a-
separate."

  Catherine had been ice up to this moment, but at this word she
flamed up. "Separate? What do you know about our separating?"

  Mrs. Penniman shook her head with a sadness in which there was
almost a sense of injury. "Your pride is my pride, and your
susceptibilities are mine. I see your side perfectly, but I also"- and
she smiled with melancholy suggestiveness- "I also see the situation
as a whole!"

  This suggestiveness was lost upon Catherine, who repeated her
violent inquiry. "Why do you talk about separation; what do you know
about it?"

  "We must study resignation," said Mrs. Penniman, hesitating, but
sententious at a venture.

  "Resignation to what?"

  "To a change of- of our plans."

  "My plans have not changed!" said Catherine, with a little laugh.

  "Ah, but Mr. Townsend's have," her aunt answered, very gently.

  "What do you mean?"

  There was an imperious brevity in the tone of this inquiry,
against which Mrs. Penniman felt bound to protest; the information
with which she had undertaken to supply her niece was after all a
favor. She had tried sharpness, and she had tried sternness; but
neither would do; she was shocked at the girl's obstinacy. "Ah
well," she said, "if he hasn't told you!" and she turned away.

  Catherine watched her a moment in silence; then she hurried after
her, stopping her before she reached the door. "Told me what? What
do you mean? What are you hinting at and threatening me with?"

  "Isn't it broken off?" asked Mrs. Penniman.

  "My engagement? Not in the least!"

  "I beg your pardon in that case. I have spoken too soon!"

  "Too soon? Soon or late," Catherine broke out, "you speak
foolishly and cruelly!"

  "What has happened between you then?" asked her aunt, struck by
the sincerity of this cry, "for something certainly has happened."

  "Nothing has happened but that I love him more and more!"

  Mrs. Penniman was silent an instant. "I suppose that's the reason
you went to see him this afternoon."

  Catherine flushed as if she had been struck. "Yes, I did go to see
him! But that's my own business."

  "Very well, then; we won't talk about it." And Mrs. Penniman moved
toward the door again; but she was stopped by a sudden imploring cry
from the girl.

  "Aunt Lavinia, where has he gone?"

  "Ah, you admit then that he has gone away! Didn't they know at his
house?"

  "They said he had left town. I asked no more questions; I was
ashamed," said Catherine, simply enough.

  "You needn't have taken so compromising a step if you had had a
little more confidence in me," Mrs. Penniman observed, with a good
deal of grandeur.

  "Is it to New Orleans?" Catherine went on, irrelevantly.

  It was the first time Mrs. Penniman had heard of New Orleans in this
connection; but she was averse to letting Catherine know that she
was in the dark. She attempted to strike an illumination from the
instructions she had received from Morris. "My dear Catherine," she
said, "when a separation has been agreed upon, the farther he goes
away the better."

  "Agreed upon? Has he agreed upon it with you?" A consummate sense of
her aunt's meddlesome folly had come over her during the last five
minutes, and she was sickened at the thought that Mrs. Penniman had
been let loose, as it were, upon her happiness.

  "He certainly has sometimes advised with me," said Mrs. Penniman.

  "Is it you, then, that has changed him and made him so unnatural?"
Catherine cried. "Is it you that have worked on him and taken him from
me? He doesn't belong to you, and I don't see how you have anything to
do with what is between us! Is it you that have made this plot, and
told him to leave me? How could you be so wicked, so cruel? What
have I ever done to you? Why can't you leave me alone? I was afraid
you would spoil everything; for you do spoil everything you touch! I
was afraid of you all the time we were abroad; I had no rest when I
thought that you were always talking to him." Catherine went on with
growing vehemence, pouring out, in her bitterness and in the
clairvoyance of her passion (which suddenly, jumping all processes,
made her judge her aunt finally and without appeal), the uneasiness
which had lain for so many months upon her heart.

  Mrs. Penniman was scared and bewildered; she saw no prospect of
introducing her little account of the purity of Morris's motives. "You
are a most ungrateful girl!" she cried. "Do you scold me for talking
with him? I'm sure we never talked of anything but you!"

  "Yes; and that was the way you worried him; you made him tired of my
very name! I wish you had never spoken of me to him; I never asked
your help!"

  "I am sure if it hadn't been for me he would never have come to
the house, and you would never have known that he thought of you,"
Mrs. Penniman rejoined, with a good deal of justice.

  "I wish he never had come to the house, and that I never had known
it! That's better than this," said poor Catherine.

  "You are a very ungrateful girl," Aunt Lavinia repeated.

  Catherine's outbreak of anger and the sense of wrong gave her, while
they lasted, the satisfaction that comes from all assertion of
force; they hurried her along, and there is always a sort of
pleasure in cleaving the air. But at bottom she hated to be violent,
and she was conscious of no aptitude for organized resentment. She
calmed herself with a great effort, but with great rapidity, and
walked about the room a few moments, trying to say to herself that her
aunt had meant everything for the best. She did not succeed in
saying it with much conviction, but after a little she was able to
speak quietly enough.

  "I am not ungrateful, but I am very unhappy. It's hard to be
grateful for that," she said. "Will you please tell me where he is?"

  "I haven't the least idea; I am not in secret correspondence with
him!" And Mrs. Penniman wished, indeed, that she were, so that she
might let him know how Catherine abused her, after all she had done.

  "Was it a plan of his, then, to break off-?" By this time
Catherine had become completely quiet.

  Mrs. Penniman began again to have a glimpse of her chance for
explaining. "He shrunk- he shrunk," she said. "He lacked courage,
but it was the courage to injure you! He couldn't bear to bring down
on you your father's curse."

  Catherine listened to this with her eyes fixed upon her aunt, and
continued to gaze at her for some time afterward. "Did he tell you
to say that?"

  "He told me to say many things- all so delicate, so
discriminating; and he told me to tell you he hoped you wouldn't
despise him."

  "I don't," said Catherine; and then she added, "And will he stay
away forever?"

  "Oh, forever is a long time. Your father, perhaps, won't live
forever."

  "Perhaps not."

  "I am sure you appreciate- you understand- even though your heart
bleeds," said Mrs. Penniman. "You doubtless think him too
scrupulous. So do I, but I respect his scruples. What he asks of you
is that you should do the same."

  Catherine was still gazing at her aunt, but she spoke at last as
if she had not heard or not understood her. "It has been a regular
plan, then. He has broken it off deliberately; he has given me up."

  "For the present, dear Catherine; he has put it off, only."

  "He has left me alone," Catherine went on.

  "Haven't you me?" asked Mrs. Penniman, with some solemnity.

  Catherine shook her head slowly. "I don't believe it!" and she
left the room.

                        CHAPTER 31.

  THOUGH she had forced herself to be calm, she preferred practicing
this virtue in private, and she forebore to show herself at tea- a
repast which, on Sundays, at six o'clock, took the place of dinner.
Doctor Sloper and his sister sat face to face, but Mrs. Penniman never
met her brother's eye. Late in the evening she went with him, but
without Catherine, to their sister Almond's, where, between the two
ladies, Catherine's unhappy situation was discussed with a frankness
that was conditioned by a good deal of mysterious reticence on Mrs.
Penniman's part.

  "I am delighted he is not to marry her," said Mrs. Almond, "but he
ought to be horsewhipped all the same."

  Mrs. Penniman, who was shocked at her sister's coarseness, replied
that he had been actuated by the noblest of motives- the desire not to
impoverish Catherine.

  "I am very happy that Catherine is not to be impoverished- but I
hope he may never have a penny too much! And what does the poor girl
say to you?" Mrs. Almond asked.

  "She says I have a genius for consolation," said Mrs. Penniman.

  This was the account of the matter that she gave to her sister,
and it was perhaps with the consciousness of genius that, on her
return that evening to Washington Square, she again presented
herself for admittance at Catherine's door. Catherine came and
opened it; she was apparently very quiet.

  "I only want to give you a little word of advice," she said. "If
your father asks you, say that everything is going on."

  Catherine stood there, with her hand on the knob, looking at her
aunt, but not asking her to come in. "Do you think he will ask me?"

  "I am sure he will. He asked me just now, on our way home from
your aunt Elizabeth's. I explained the whole thing to your aunt
Elizabeth. I said to your father I knew nothing about it."

  "Do you think he will ask me, when he sees- when he sees-?" But here
Catherine stopped.

  "The more he sees, the more disagreeable he will be," said her aunt.

  "He shall see as little as possible!" Catherine declared.

  "Tell him you are to be married."

  "So I am," said Catherine, softly; and she closed the door upon
her aunt.

  She could not have said this two days later- for instance, on
Tuesday, when she at last received a letter from Morris Townsend. It
was an epistle of considerable length, measuring five large square
pages, and written at Philadelphia. It was an explanatory document,
and it explained a great many things, chief among which were the
considerations that had led the writer to take advantage of an
urgent "professional" absence to try and banish from his mind the
image of one whose path he had crossed only to scatter it with
ruins. He ventured to expect but partial success in this attempt,
but he could promise her that, whatever his failure, he would never
again interpose between her generous heart and her brilliant prospects
and filial duties. He closed with an intimation that his
professional pursuits might compel him to travel for some months,
and with the hope that when they should each have accommodated
themselves to what was sternly involved in their respective positions-
even should this result not be reached for years- they should meet
as friends, as fellow sufferers, as innocent but philosophic victims
of a great social law. That her life should be peaceful and happy
was the dearest wish of him who ventured still to subscribe himself
her most obedient servant. The letter was beautifully written, and
Catherine, who kept it for many years after this, was able, when her
sense of the bitterness of its meaning and the hollowness of its
tone had grown less acute, to admire its grace of expression. At
present, for a long time after she received it, all she had to help
her was the determination, daily more rigid, to make no appeal to
the compassion of her father.

  He suffered a week to elapse, and then one day, in the morning, at
an hour at which she rarely saw him, he strolled into the back parlor.
He had watched his time, and he found her alone. She was sitting
with some work, and he came and stood in front of her. He was going
out; he had on his hat, and was drawing on his gloves.

  "It doesn't seem to me that you are treating me just now with all
the consideration I deserve," he said in a moment.

  "I don't know what I have done," Catherine answered, with her eyes
on her work.

  "You have apparently quite banished from your mind the request I
made you at Liverpool before we sailed- the request that you would
notify me in advance before leaving my house."

  "I have not left your house," said Catherine.

  "But you intend to leave it, and, by what you gave me to understand,
your departure must be impending. In fact, though you are still here
in body, you are already absent in spirit. Your mind has taken up
its residence with your prospective husband, and you might quite as
well be lodged under the conjugal roof for all the benefit we get from
your society."

  "I will try and be more cheerful," said Catherine.

  "You certainly ought to be cheerful; you ask a great deal if you are
not. To the pleasure of marrying a charming young man you add that
of having your own way; you strike me as a very lucky young lady!"

  Catherine got up; she was suffocating. But she folded her work
deliberately and correctly, bending her burning face upon it. Her
father stood where he had planted himself; she hoped he would go,
but he smoothed and buttoned his gloves, and then he rested his
hands upon his hips.

  "It would be a convenience to me to know when I may expect to have
an empty house," he went on. "When you go, your aunt marches."

  She looked at him at last, with a long, silent gaze, which, in spite
of her pride and her resolution, uttered part of the appeal she had
tried not to make. Her father's cold gray eye sounded her own, and
he insisted on his point.

  "Is it tomorrow? Is it next week, or the week after?"

  "I shall not go away!" said Catherine.

  The doctor raised his eyebrows. "Has he backed out?"

  "I have broken off my engagement."

  "Broken it off?"

  "I have asked him to leave New York, and he has gone away for a long
time."

  The doctor was both puzzled and disappointed, but he solved his
perplexity by saying to himself that his daughter simply
misrepresented- justifiably, if one would, but nevertheless,
misrepresented- the facts; and he eased off his disappointment,
which was that of a man losing a chance for a little triumph that he
had rather counted on, by a few words that he uttered aloud.

  "How does he take his dismissal?"

  "I don't know!" said Catherine, less ingeniously than she had
hitherto spoken.

  "You mean you don't care? You are rather cruel, after encouraging
him and playing with him for so long!"

  The doctor had his revenge, after all.

                        CHAPTER 32.

  OUR STORY has hitherto moved with very short steps, but as it
approaches its termination it must take a long stride. As time went
on, it might have appeared to the doctor that his daughter's account
of her rapture with Morris Townsend, mere bravado as he had deemed it,
was in some degree justified by the sequel. Morris remained as rigidly
and unremittingly absent as if he had died of a broken heart, and
Catherine had apparently buried the memory of this fruitless episode
as deep as if it had terminated by her own choice. We know that she
had been deeply and incurably wounded, but the doctor had no means
of knowing it. He was certainly curious about it, and would have given
a good deal to discover the exact truth; but it was his punishment
that he never knew- his punishment, I mean, for the abuse of sarcasm
in his relations with his daughter. There was a good deal of effective
sarcasm in her keeping him in the dark, and the rest of the world
conspired with her, in this sense, to be sarcastic. Mrs. Penniman told
him nothing, partly because he never questioned her- he made too light
of Mrs. Penniman for that- and partly because she flattered herself
that a tormenting reserve, and a serene profession of ignorance, would
avenge her for his theory that she had meddled in the matter. He
went two or three times to see Mrs. Montgomery, but Mrs. Montgomery
had nothing to impart. She simply knew that her brother's engagement
was broken off; and now that Miss Sloper was out of danger, she
preferred not to bear witness in any way against Morris. She had
done so before- however unwillingly- because she was sorry for Miss
Sloper; but she was not sorry for Miss Sloper now- not at all sorry.
Morris had told her nothing about his relations with Miss Sloper at
the time, and he had told her nothing since. He was always away, and
he very seldom wrote to her; she believed he had gone to California.
Mrs. Almond had, in her sister's phrase, "taken up" Catherine
violently since the recent catastrophe; but, though the girl was
very grateful to her for her kindness, she revealed no secrets, and
the good lady could give the doctor no satisfaction. Even, however,
had she been able to narrate to him the private history of his
daughter's unhappy love affair, it would have given her a certain
comfort to leave him in ignorance; for Mrs. Almond was at this time
not altogether in sympathy with her brother. She had guessed for
herself that Catherine had been cruelly jilted- she knew nothing
from Mrs. Penniman, for Mrs. Penniman had not ventured to lay the
famous explanation of Morris's motives before Mrs. Almond, though
she had thought it good enough for Catherine- and she pronounced her
brother too consistently indifferent to what the poor creature must
have suffered and must still be suffering. Doctor Sloper had his
theory, and he rarely altered his theories. The marriage would have
been an abominable one, and the girl had had a blessed escape. She was
not to be pitied for that, and to pretend to condole with her would
have been to make concessions to the idea that she had ever had a
right to think of Morris.

  "I put my foot on this idea from the first, and I keep it there
now," said the doctor. "I don't see anything cruel in that; one
can't keep it there too long." To this Mrs. Almond more than once
replied that, if Catherine had got rid of her incongruous lover, she
deserved the credit of it, and that to bring herself to her father's
enlightened view of the matter must have cost her an effort that he
was bound to appreciate.

  "I am by no means sure she has got rid of him," the doctor said.
"There is not the smallest probability that, after having been as
obstinate as a mule for two years, she suddenly became amenable to
reason. It is infinitely more probable that he got rid of her."

  "All the more reason you should be gentle with her."

  "I am gentle with her. But I can't do the pathetic; I can't pump
up tears, to look graceful, over the most fortunate thing that ever
happened to her."

  "You have no sympathy," said Mrs. Almond. "That was never your
strong point. You have only to look at her to see that, right or
wrong, and whether the rupture came from herself or from him, her poor
little heart is grievously bruised."

  "Handling bruises, and even dropping tears on them, doesn't make
them any better! My business is to see she gets no more knocks, and
that I shall carefully attend to. But I don't at all recognize your
description of Catherine. She doesn't strike me in the least as a
young woman going about in search of a moral poultice. In fact, she
seems to me much better than while the fellow was hanging about. She
is perfectly comfortable and blooming; she eats and sleeps, takes
her usual exercise, and overloads herself, as usual, with finery.
She is always knitting some purse or embroidering some handkerchief,
and it seems to me she turns these articles out about as fast as ever.
She hasn't much to say; but when had she anything to say? She had
her little dance, and now she is sitting down to rest. I suspect that,
on the whole, she enjoys it."

  "She enjoys it as people enjoy getting rid of a leg that has been
crushed. The state of mind after amputation is doubtless one of
comparative repose."

  "If your leg is a metaphor for young Townsend, I can assure you he
has never been crushed. Crushed? Not he! He is alive and perfectly
intact; and that's why I am not satisfied."

  "Should you have liked to kill him?" asked Mrs. Almond.

  "Yes, very much. I think it is quite possible that it is all a
blind."

  "A blind?"

  "An arrangement between them. Il fait le mort, as they say in
France; but he is looking out of the corner of his eye. You can depend
upon it, he has not burnt his ships; he has kept one to come back
in. When I am dead, he will set sail again, and then she will marry
him."

  "It is interesting to know that you accuse your only daughter of
being the vilest of hypocrites," said Mrs. Almond.

  "I don't see what difference her being my only daughter makes. It is
better to accuse one than a dozen. But I don't accuse anyone. There is
not the smallest hypocrisy about Catherine, and I deny that she even
pretends to be miserable."

  The doctor's idea that the thing was a "blind" had its intermissions
and revivals; but it may be said, on the whole, to have increased as
he grew older; together with his impressions of Catherine's blooming
and comfortable condition. Naturally, if he had not found grounds
for viewing her as a lovelorn maiden during the year or two that
followed her great trouble, he found none at a time when she had
completely recovered her self-possession. He was obliged to
recognize the fact that, if the two young people were waiting for
him to get out of the way, they were at least waiting very
patiently. He had heard from time to time that Morris was in New York;
but he never remained there long, and, to the best of the doctor's
belief, had no communication with Catherine. He was sure they never
met, and he had reason to suspect that Morris never wrote to her.
After the letter that has been mentioned, she heard from him twice
again, at considerable intervals; but on none of these occasions did
she write herself. On the other hand, as the doctor observed, she
averted herself rigidly from the idea of marrying other people. Her
opportunities for doing so were not numerous, but they occurred
often enough to test her disposition. She refused a widower, a man
with a genial temperament, a handsome fortune, and three little
girls (he had heard that she was very fond of children, and he pointed
to his own with some confidence); and she turned a deaf ear to the
solicitations of a clever young lawyer, who, with the prospect of a
great practice, and the reputation of a most agreeable man, had had
the shrewdness, when he came to look about him for a wife, to
believe that she would suit him better than several younger and
prettier girls. Mr. Macalister, the widower, had desired to make a
marriage of reason, and had chosen Catherine for what he supposed to
be her latent matronly qualities; but John Ludlow, who was a year
the girl's junior, and spoken of always as a young man who might
have his "pick," was seriously in love with her. Catherine, however,
would never look at him; she made it plain to him that she thought
he came to see her too often. He afterward consoled himself, and
married a very different person, little Miss Sturtevant, whose
attractions were obvious to the dullest comprehension. Catherine, at
the time of these events, had left her thirtieth year well behind her,
and had quite taken her place as an old maid. Her father would have
preferred she should marry, and he once told her that he hoped she
would not be too fastidious. "I should like to see you an honest man's
wife before I die," he said. This was after John Ludlow had been
compelled to give it up, though the doctor had advised him to
persevere. The doctor exercised no further pressure, and had the
credit of not "worrying" at all over his daughter's singleness; in
fact, he worried rather more than appeared, and there were
considerable periods during which he felt sure that Morris Townsend
was hidden behind some door. "If he is not, why doesn't she marry?" he
asked himself. "Limited as her intelligence may be, she must
understand perfectly well that she is made to do the usual thing."
Catherine, however, became an admirable old maid. She formed habits,
regulated her days upon a system of her own, interested herself in
charitable institutions, asylums, hospitals, and aid societies; and
went generally, with an even and noiseless step, about the rigid
business of her life. This life had, however, a secret history as well
as a public one- if I may talk of the public history of a mature and
diffident spinster for whom publicity had always a combination of
terrors. From her own point of view the great facts of her career were
that Morris Townsend had trifled with her affection, and that her
father had broken its spring. Nothing could ever alter these facts;
they were always there, like her name, her age, her plain face.
Nothing could ever undo the wrong or cure the pain that Morris had
inflicted on her, and nothing could ever make her feel toward her
father as she felt in her younger years. There was something dead in
her life, and her duty was to try and fill the void. Catherine
recognized this duty to the utmost; she had a great disapproval of
brooding and moping. She had, of course, no faculty for quenching
memory in dissipation; but she mingled freely in the usual gaieties of
the town, and she became at last an inevitable figure at all
respectable entertainments. She was greatly liked, and as time went on
she grew to be a sort of kindly maiden aunt to the younger portion
of society. Young girls were apt to confide to her their love
affairs (which they never did to Mrs. Penniman), and young men to be
fond of her without knowing why. She developed a few harmless
eccentricities; her habits, once formed, were rather stiffly
maintained; her opinions, on all moral and social matters, were
extremely conservative; and before she was forty she was regarded as
an old-fashioned person, and an authority on customs that had passed
away. Mrs. Penniman, in comparison, was quite a girlish figure; she
grew younger as she advanced in life. She lost none of her relish
for beauty and mystery, but she had little opportunity to exercise it.
With Catherine's later wooers she failed to establish relations as
intimate as those which had given her so many interesting hours in the
society of Morris Townsend. These gentlemen had an indefinable
mistrust of her good offices, and they never talked to her about
Catherine's charms. Her ringlets, her buckles and bangles glistened
more brightly with each succeeding year, and she remained quite the
same officious and imaginative Mrs. Penniman, and the odd mixture of
impetuosity and circumspection, that we have hitherto known. As
regards one point, however, her circumspection prevailed, and she must
be given due credit for it. For upward of seventeen years she never
mentioned Morris Townsend's name to her niece. Catherine was
grateful to her, but this consistent silence, so little in accord with
her aunt's character, gave her a certain alarm, and she could never
wholly rid herself of a suspicion that Mrs. Penniman sometimes had
news of him.

                        CHAPTER 33.

  LITTLE BY LITTLE Doctor Sloper had retired from his profession; he
visited only those patients in whose symptoms he recognized a
certain originality. He went again to Europe, and remained two
years; Catherine went with him, and on this occasion Mrs. Penniman was
of the party. Europe apparently had few surprises for Mrs. Penniman,
who frequently remarked, in the most romantic sites, "You know I am
very familiar with all this." It should be added that such remarks
were usually not addressed to her brother, or yet to her niece, but to
fellow tourists who happened to be at hand, or even to the cicerone or
the goatherd in the foreground.

  One day, after his return from Europe, the doctor said something
to his daughter that made her start- it seemed to come from so far out
of the past.

  "I should like you to promise me something before I die."

  "Why do you talk about your dying?" she asked.

  "Because I am sixty-eight years old."

  "I hope you will live a long time," said Catherine.

  "I hope I shall! But someday I shall take a bad cold, and then it
will not matter much what anyone hopes. That will be the manner of
my exit, and when it takes place, remember I told you so. Promise me
not to marry Morris Townsend after I am gone."

  This was what made Catherine start, as I have said; but her start
was a silent one, and for some moments she said nothing. "Why do you
speak of him?" she asked at last.

  "You challenge everything I say. I speak of him because he's a
topic, like any other. He's to be seen, like anyone else, and he is
still looking for a wife- having had one and got rid of her, I don't
know by what means. He has lately been in New York, and at your cousin
Marian's house; your aunt Elizabeth saw him there."

  "They neither of them told me," said Catherine.

  "That's their merit; it's not yours. He has grown fat and bald,
and he has not made his fortune. But I can't trust those facts alone
to steel your heart against him, and that's why I ask you to promise."

  "Fat and bald." These words presented a strange image to Catherine's
mind, out of which the memory of the most beautiful young man in the
world had never faded. "I don't think you understand," she said. "I
very seldom think of Mr. Townsend."

  "It will be very easy for you to go on, then. Promise me, after my
death, to do the same."

  Again, for some moments, Catherine was silent; her father's
request deeply amazed her; it opened an old wound, and made it ache
afresh. "I don't think I can promise that," she answered.

  "It would be a great satisfaction," said her father.

  "You don't understand. I can't promise that."

  The doctor was silent a minute. "I ask you for a particular
reason. I am altering my will."

  This reason failed to strike Catherine; and indeed she scarcely
understood it. All her feelings were merged in the sense that he was
trying to treat her as he had treated her years before. She had
suffered from it then; and now all her experience, all her acquired
tranquillity and rigidity protested. She had been so humble in her
youth that she could now afford to have a little pride, and there
was something in his request, and in her father's thinking himself
so free to make it, that seemed an injury to her dignity. Poor
Catherine's dignity was not aggressive; it never sat in state; but
if you pushed far enough you could find it. Her father had pushed very
far.

  "I can't promise," she simply repeated.

  "You are very obstinate," said the doctor.

  "I don't think you understand."

  "Please explain, then."

  "I can't explain," said Catherine, "and I can't promise."

  "Upon my word," her father exclaimed, "I had no idea how obstinate
you are!"

  She knew herself that she was obstinate, and it gave her a certain
joy. She was now a middle-aged woman.

  About a year after this, the accident that the doctor had spoken
of occurred: He took a violent cold. Driving out to Bloomingdale one
April day to see a patient of unsound mind, who was confined in a
private asylum for the insane, and whose family greatly desired a
medical opinion from an eminent source, he was caught in a spring
shower, and being in a buggy, without a hood, he found himself
soaked to the skin. He came home with an ominous chill, and on the
morrow he was seriously ill. "It is congestion of the lungs," he
said to Catherine. "I shall need very good nursing. It will make no
difference, for I shall not recover; but I wish everything to be done,
to the smallest detail, as if I should. I hate an ill-conducted
sick-room, and you will be so good as to nurse me, on the hypothesis
that I shall get well." He told her which of his fellow physicians
to send for, and gave her a multitude of minute directions; it was
quite on the optimistic hypothesis that she nursed him. But he had
never been wrong in his life, and he was not wrong now. He was
touching his seventieth year, and though he had a very well-tempered
constitution, his hold upon life had lost its firmness. He died
after three weeks' illness, during which Mrs. Penniman, as well as his
daughter, had been assiduous at his bedside.

  On his will being opened, after a decent interval, it was found to
consist of two portions. The first of these dated from ten years back,
and consisted of a series of dispositions by which he left the great
mass of his property to his daughter, with becoming legacies to his
two sisters. The second was a codicil, of recent origin, maintaining
the annuities to Mrs. Penniman and Mrs. Almond, but reducing
Catherine's share to a fifth of what he had first bequeathed her. "She
is amply provided for from her mother's side," the document ran,
"never having spent more than a fraction of her income from this
source; so that her fortune is already more than sufficient to attract
those unscrupulous adventurers whom she has given me reason to believe
that she persists in regarding as an interesting class." The large
remainder of his property, therefore, Doctor Sloper had divided into
seven unequal parts, which he left, as endowments, to as many
different hospitals and schools of medicine in various cities of the
union.

  To Mrs. Penniman it seemed monstrous that a man should play such
tricks with other people's money; for after his death, of course, as
she said, it was other people's. "Of course, you will immediately
break the will," she remarked to Catherine.

  "Oh no," Catherine answered, "I like it very much. Only I wish it
had been expressed a little differently!"

                        CHAPTER 34.

  IT WAS HER HABIT to remain in town very late in the summer; she
preferred the house in Washington Square to any other habitation
whatever, and it was under protest that she used to go to the
seaside for the month of August. At the sea she spent her month at
an hotel. The year that her father died she intermitted this custom
altogether, not thinking it consistent with deep mourning; and the
year after that she put off her departure till so late that the middle
of August found her still in the heated solitude of Washington Square.
Mrs. Penniman, who was fond of a change, was usually eager for a visit
to the country; but this year she appeared quite content with such
rural impressions as she could gather at the parlor window from the
ailanthus trees behind the wooden paling. The peculiar fragrance of
this vegetation used to diffuse itself in the evening air, and Mrs.
Penniman, on the warm nights of July, often sat at the open window and
inhaled it. This was a happy moment for Mrs. Penniman; after the death
of her brother she felt more free to obey her impulses. A vague
oppression had disappeared from her life, and she enjoyed a sense of
freedom of which she had not been conscious since the memorable
time, so long ago, when the doctor went abroad with Catherine and left
her at home to entertain Morris Townsend. The year that had elapsed
since her brother's death reminded her of that happy time, because,
although Catherine, in growing older, had become a person to be
reckoned with, yet her society was a very different thing, as Mrs.
Penniman said, from that of a tank of cold water. The elder lady
hardly knew what use to make of this larger margin of her life; she
sat and looked at it very much as she had often sat, with her poised
needle in her hand, before her tapestry frame. She had a confident
hope, however, that her rich impulses, her talent for embroidery,
would still find their application, and this confidence was
justified before many months had elapsed.

  Catherine continued to live in her father's house, in spite of its
being represented to her that a maiden lady of quiet habits might find
a more convenient abode in one of the smaller dwellings, with
brownstone fronts, which had at this time begun to adorn the
transverse thoroughfares in the upper part of the town. She liked
the earlier structure- it had begun by this time to be called an "old"
house- and proposed to herself to end her days in it. If it was to
large for a pair of unpretending gentlewomen, this was better than the
opposite fault; for Catherine had no desire to find herself in
closer quarters with her aunt. She expected to spend the rest of her
life in Washington Square, and to enjoy Mrs. Penniman's society for
the whole of this period; as she had a conviction that, long as she
might live, her aunt would live at least as long, and always retain
her brilliancy and activity. Mrs. Penniman suggested to her the idea
of a rich vitality.

  On one of those warm evenings in July of which mention has been
made, the two ladies sat together at an open window, looking out on
the quiet Square. It was too hot for lighted lamps, for reading, or
for work; it might have appeared too hot even for conversation, Mrs.
Penniman having long been speechless. She sat forward in the window,
half on the balcony, humming a little song. Catherine was within the
room, in a low rocking chair, dressed in white, and slowly using a
large palmetto fan. It was in this way, at this season, that the
aunt and niece, after they had had tea, habitually spent their
evenings.

  "Catherine," said Mrs. Penniman at last, "I am going to say
something that will surprise you."

  "Pray do," Catherine answered. "I like surprises. And it is so quiet
now."

  "Well, then, I have seen Morris Townsend."

  If Catherine was surprised, she checked the expression of it; she
gave neither a start nor an exclamation. She remained, indeed, for
some moments intensely still, and this may very well have been a
symptom of emotion. "I hope he was well," she said at last.

  "I don't know; he is a great deal changed. He would like very much
to see you."

  "I would rather not see him," said Catherine, quickly.

  "I was afraid you would say that. But you don't seem surprised!"

  "I am- very much."

  "I met him at Marian's," said Mrs. Penniman. "He goes to Marian's,
and they are so afraid you will meet him there. It's my belief that
that's why he goes. He wants so much to see you." Catherine made no
response to this, and Mrs. Penniman went on. "I didn't know him at
first, he is so remarkably changed; but he knew me in a minute. He
says I am not in the least changed. You know how polite he always was.
He was coming away when I came, and we walked a little distance
together. He is still very handsome, only of course he looks older,
and he is not so- so animated as he used to be. There was a touch of
sadness about him; but there was a touch of sadness about him
before, especially when he went away. I am afraid he has not been very
successful- that he has never got thoroughly established. I don't
suppose he is sufficiently plodding and that, after all, is what
succeeds in this world." Mrs. Penniman had not mentioned Morris
Townsend's name to her niece for upwards of the fifth of a century;
but now that she had broken the spell, she seemed to wish to make up
for lost time, as if there had been a sort of exhilaration in
hearing herself talk of him. She proceeded, however, with considerable
caution, pausing occasionally to let Catherine give some sign.
Catherine gave no other sign than to stop the rocking of her chair and
the swaying of her fan; she sat motionless and silent. "It was on
Tuesday last," said Mrs. Penniman, "and I have been hesitating ever
since about telling you. I didn't know how you might like it. At
last I thought that it was so long ago that you would probably not
have any particular feeling. I saw him again after meeting him at
Marian's. I met him in the street, and he went a few steps with me.
The first thing he said was about you; he asked ever so many
questions. Marian didn't want me to speak to you; she didn't want
you to know that they receive him. I told him I was sure that after
all these years you couldn't have any feeling about that; you couldn't
grudge him the hospitality of his own cousin's house. I said you would
be bitter indeed if you did that. Marian has the most extraordinary
ideas about what happened between you; she seems to think he behaved
in some very unusual manner. I took the liberty of reminding her of
the real facts, and placing the story in its true light. He has no
bitterness, Catherine, I can assure you; and he might be excused for
it, for things have not gone well with him. He has been all over the
world, and tried to establish himself everywhere; but his evil star
was against him. It is most interesting to hear him talk of his evil
star. Everything failed; everything but his- you know, you remember-
his proud, high spirit. I believe he married some lady somewhere in
Europe. You know they marry in such a peculiar matter-of-course way in
Europe; a marriage of reason they call it. She died soon afterward; as
he said to me, she only flitted across his life. He has not been in
New York for ten years; he came back a few days ago. The first thing
he did was to ask me about you. He had heard you had never married; he
seemed very much interested about that. He said you had been the
real romance of his life."

  Catherine had suffered her companion to proceed from point to point,
and pause to pause, without interrupting her; she fixed her eyes on
the ground and listened. But the last phrase I have quoted was
followed by a pause of peculiar significance, and then, at last,
Catherine spoke. It will be observed that before doing so she had
received a good deal of information about Morris Townsend. "Please say
no more; please don't follow up that subject."

  "Doesn't it interest you?" asked Mrs. Penniman, with a certain
timorous archness.

  "It pains me," said Catherine.

  "I was afraid you would say that. But don't you think you could
get used to it? He wants so much to see you."

  "Please don't, Aunt Lavinia," said Catherine, getting up from her
seat. She moved quickly away, and went to the other window, which
stood open to the balcony; and here, in the embrasure, concealed
from her aunt by the white curtains, she remained a long time, looking
out into the warm darkness. She had had a great shock; it was as if
the gulf of the past had suddenly opened, and a spectral figure had
risen out of it. There were some things she believed she had got over,
some feelings that she had thought of as dead; but apparently there
was a certain vitality in them still. Mrs. Penniman had made them stir
themselves. It was but a momentary agitation, Catherine said to
herself; it would presently pass away. She was trembling, and her
heart was beating so that she could feel it; but this also would
subside. Then suddenly, while she waited for a return of her calmness,
she burst into tears. But her tears flowed very silently, so that Mrs.
Penniman had no observation of them. It was perhaps, however,
because Mrs. Penniman suspected them that she said no more that
evening about Morris Townsend.

                        CHAPTER 35.

  HER REFRESHED attention to this gentleman had not those limits of
which Catherine desired, for herself, to be conscious; it lasted
long enough to enable her to wait another week before speaking of
him again. It was under the same circumstances that she once more
attacked the subject. She had been sitting with her niece in the
evening; only on this occasion, as the night was not so warm, the lamp
had been lighted, and Catherine had placed herself near it with a
morsel of fancywork. Mrs. Penniman went and sat alone for half an hour
on the balcony; then she came in, moving vaguely about the room. At
last she sunk into a seat near Catherine, with clasped hands, and a
little look of excitement.

  "Shall you be angry if I speak to you again about him?" she asked.

  Catherine looked up at her quietly. "Who is he?"

  "He whom you once loved."

  "I shall not be angry, but I shall not like it."

  "He sent you a message," said Mrs. Penniman. "I promised him to
deliver it, and I must keep my promise."

  In all these years Catherine had had time to forget how little she
had to thank her aunt for in the season of her misery; she had long
ago forgiven Mrs. Penniman for taking too much upon herself. But for a
moment this attitude of interposition and disinterestedness, this
carrying of messages and redeeming of promises, brought back the sense
that her companion was a dangerous woman. She had said she would not
be angry; but for an instant she felt sore. "I don't care what you
do with your promise!" she answered.

  Mrs. Penniman, however, with her high conception of the sanctity
of pledges, carried her point. "I have gone too far to retreat," she
said, though precisely what this meant she was not at pains to
explain. "Mr. Townsend wishes most particularly to see you, Catherine;
he believes that if you knew how much, and why, he wishes it, you
would consent to do so."

  "There can be no reason," said Catherine "no good reason."

  "His happiness depends upon it. Is not that a good reason?" asked
Mrs. Penniman, impressively.

  "Not for me. My happiness does not."

  "I think you will be happier after you have seen him. He is going
away again- going to resume his wanderings. It is a very lonely,
restless, joyless life. Before he goes he wishes to speak to you; it
is a fixed idea with him- he is always thinking of it. He has
something very important to say to you. He believes that you never
understood him- that you never judged him rightly, and the belief
has always weighed upon him terribly. He wishes to justify himself; he
believes that in a very few words he could do so. He wishes to meet
you as a friend."

  Catherine listened to this wonderful speech without pausing in her
work; she had now had several days to accustom herself to think of
Morris Townsend again as an actuality. When it was over she said
simply, "Please say to Mr. Townsend that I wish he would leave me
alone."

  She had hardly spoken when a sharp, firm ring at the door vibrated
through the summer night. Catherine looked up at the clock; it
marked a quarter past nine- a very late hour for visitors,
especially in the empty condition of the town. Mrs. Penniman at the
same moment gave a little start, and then Catherine's eyes turned
quickly to her aunt. They met Mrs. Penniman's, and sounded them for
a moment sharply. Mrs. Penniman was blushing; her look was a conscious
one; it seemed to confess something. Catherine guessed its meaning,
and rose quickly from her chair.

  "Aunt Penniman," she said, in a tone that scared her companion,
"have you taken the liberty...?"

  "My dearest Catherine," stammered Mrs. Penniman, "just wait till you
see him!"

  Catherine had frightened her aunt, but she was also frightened
herself; she was on the point of rushing to give orders to the
servant, who was passing to the door, to admit no one; but the fear of
meeting her visitor checked her.

  "Mr. Morris Townsend."

  This was what she heard, vaguely but recognizably, articulated by
the domestic, while she hesitated. She had her back turned to the door
of the parlor, and for some moments she kept it turned, feeling that
he had come in. He had not spoken, however, and at last she faced
about. Then she saw a gentleman standing in the middle of the room,
from which her aunt had discreetly retired.

  She would never have known him. He was forty-five years old, and his
figure was not that of the straight, slim young man she remembered.
But it was a very fine presence, and a fair and lustrous beard,
spreading itself upon a well-presented chest, contributed to its
effect. After a moment Catherine recognized the upper half of the
face, which, though her visitor's clustering locks had grown thin, was
still remarkably handsome. He stood in a deeply deferential
attitude, with his eyes on her face. "I have ventured- I have
ventured," he said; and then he paused, looking about him, as if he
expected her to ask him to sit down. It was the old voice; but it
had not the old charm. Catherine, for a minute, was conscious of a
distinct determination not to invite him to take a seat. Why had he
come? It was wrong for him to come. Morris was embarrassed, but
Catherine gave him no help. It was not that she was glad of his
embarrassment; on the contrary, it excited all her own liabilities
of this kind, and gave her great pain. But how could she welcome him
when she felt so vividly that he ought not to have come? "I wanted
so much- I was determined," Morris went on. But he stopped again; it
was not easy. Catherine still said nothing, and he may well have
recalled with apprehension her ancient faculty of silence. She
continued to look at him, however, and as she did so she made the
strangest observation. It seemed to be he, and yet not he; it was
the man who had been everything, and yet this person was nothing.
How long ago it was- how old she had grown- how much she had lived!
She had lived on something that was connected with him, and she had
consumed it in doing so. This person did not look unhappy. He was fair
and well-preserved, perfectly dressed, mature and complete. As
Catherine looked at him, the story of his life defined itself in his
eyes; he had made himself comfortable, and he had never been caught.
But even while her perception opened itself to this, she had no desire
to catch him; his presence was painful to her, and she only wished
he would go.

  "Will you not sit down?" he asked.

  "I think we had better not," said Catherine.

  "I offend you by coming?" He was very grave; he spoke in a tone of
the richest respect.

  "I don't think you ought to have come."

  "Did not Mrs. Penniman tell you- did she not give you my message?"

  "She told me something, but I did not understand."

  "I wish you would let me tell you- let me speak for myself."

  "I don't think it is necessary," said Catherine.

  "Not for you, perhaps, but for me. It would be a great satisfaction-
and I have not many." He seemed to be coming nearer; Catherine
turned away. "Can we not be friends again?" he asked.

  "We're not enemies," said Catherine. "I have none but friendly
feelings to you."

  "Ah, I wonder whether you know the happiness it gives me to hear you
say that!" Catherine uttered no intimation that she measured the
influence of her words; and he presently went on, "You have not
changed- the years have passed happily for you."

  "They have passed very quietly," said Catherine.

  "They have left no marks; you are admirably young." This time he
succeeded in coming nearer- he was close to her; she saw his glossy
perfumed beard, and his eyes above it looking strange and hard. It was
very different from his old- from his young- face. If she had first
seen him this way she would not have liked him. It seemed to her
that he was smiling, or trying to smile. "Catherine," he said,
lowering his voice, "I have never ceased to think of you."

  "Please don't say these things," she answered.

  "Do you hate me?"

  "Oh no," said Catherine.

  Something in her tone discouraged him, but in a moment he
recovered himself. "Have you still some kindness for me, then?"

  "I don't know why you have come here to ask me such things!"
Catherine exclaimed.

  "Because for many years it has been the desire of my life that we
should be friends again."

  "That is impossible."

  "Why so? Not if you will allow it."

  "I will not allow it," said Catherine.

  He looked at her again in silence. "I see; my presence troubles
you and pains you. I will go away; but you must give me leave to
come again."

  "Please don't come again," she said.

  "Never? Never?"

  She made a great effort; she wished to say something that would make
it impossible he should ever again cross her threshold. "It is wrong
of you. There is no propriety in it- no reason for it."

  "Ah, dearest lady, you do me injustice!" cried Morris Townsend.
"We have only waited, and now we are free."

  "You treated me badly," said Catherine.

  "Not if you think of it rightly. You had your quiet life with your
father- which was just what I could not make up my mind to rob you
of."

  "Yes; I had that."

  Morris felt it to be a considerable damage to his cause that he
could not add that she had had something more besides; for it is
needless to say that he had learned the contents of Doctor Sloper's
will. He was, nevertheless, not at a loss. "There are worse fates than
that!" he exclaimed, with expression; and he might have been
supposed to refer to his own unprotected situation. Then he added,
with a deeper tenderness, "Catherine, have you never forgiven me?"

  "I forgave you years ago, but it is useless for us to attempt to
be friends."

  "Not if we forget the past. We have still a future, thank God!"

  "I can't forget- I don't forget," said Catherine. "You treated me
too badly. I felt it very much; I felt it for years." And then she
went on, with her wish to show him that he must not come to her this
way, "I can't begin again- I can't take it up. Everything is dead
and buried. It was too serious; it made a great change in my life. I
never expected to see you here."

  "Ah, you are angry!" cried Morris, who wished immensely that he
could extort some flash of passion from her calmness. In that case
he might hope.

  "No, I am not angry. Anger does not last that way for years. But
there are other things. Impressions last, when they have been
strong. But I can't talk."

  Morris stood stroking his beard, with a clouded eye. "Why have you
never married?" he asked, abruptly. "You have had opportunities."

  "I didn't wish to marry."

  "Yes, you are rich, you are free; you had nothing to gain."

  "I had nothing to gain," said Catherine.

  Morris looked vaguely round him, and gave a deep sigh. "Well, I
was in hopes that we might still have been friends."

  "I meant to tell you, by my aunt, in answer to your message- if
you had waited for an answer- that it was unnecessary for you to
come in that hope."

  "Good-bye, then," said Morris. "Excuse my indiscretion."

  He bowed, and she turned away- standing there, averted, with her
eyes on the ground, for some moments after she had heard him close the
door of the room.

  In the hall he found Mrs. Penniman, fluttered and eager; she
appeared to have been hovering there under the irreconcilable
promptings of her curiosity and her dignity.

  "That was a precious plan of yours!" said Morris, clapping on his
hat.

  "Is she so hard?" asked Mrs. Penniman.

  "She doesn't care a button for me- with her confounded little dry
manner."

  "Was it very dry?" pursued Mrs. Penniman, with solicitude.

  Morris took no notice of her question; he stood musing an instant,
with his hat on. "But why the deuce, then, would she never marry?"

  "Yes- why indeed?" sighed Mrs. Penniman. And then, as if from a
sense of the inadequacy of this explanation, "But you will not
despair- you will come back?"

  "Come back? Damnation!" And Morris Townsend strode out of the house,
leaving Mrs. Penniman staring.

  Catherine, meanwhile, in the parlor, picking up her morsel of
fancywork, had seated herself with it again- for life, as it were.

                        THE END
.