Henry James .............................................................................................................................................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

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

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 secondrate 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 twentyseven, 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

twentyseven 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

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

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

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 thirtythree, 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

"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

"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

"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

"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

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

She was a healthy, wellgrown 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

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

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 oldfashioned

view of the education of young persons. He had no particular theory on the subject; it had scarcely as yet

become a necessity of selfdefense to have a collection of theories. It simply appeared to him proper and

reasonable that a wellbred 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 twentyfirst year, and Mrs. Almond's party

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, widefronted house, with a big

balcony before the drawingroom 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

broadbosomed, broadbased 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

middleaged 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 followmymaster, 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.

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

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

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 tonguetied,

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

Then Catherine looked up at him; he was certainly beautiful, and not at all red. "Yes," she said; she

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

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

"You see, people forget you," he said, smiling at Catherine with his delightful gaze, while he

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

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

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

"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."

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

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

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

"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

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

"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

"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.

Catherine did not say to herself in the dark, "My dress only?" Mrs. Penniman's announcement

"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

"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.

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

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

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

"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

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

"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.

"We are very glad to see him," said Catherine. And she wished to talk more about him, but she

"Oh, he has been away from New York he has been all round the world. He doesn't know many

"Well, I mean all the good ones. All the pretty young ladies like Mrs. Penniman!" And Arthur

"Well, I never knew a foreigner," said young Townsend, in a tone which seemed to indicate that

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

"Well, the people of this city are clever enough for me. I know some of them that think they are

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

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

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

Catherine thought he naturally would be, and gave herself up for some moments to the

"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

"I don't know I believe she's very respectable," said young Townsend. And then he looked across

Morris Townsend paused in his conversation with Mrs. Penniman, and stared, with a little smile.

"As far as you are concerned, I can't return the compliment," he said to Catherine's companion.

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

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

"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

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

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 acourting!"

"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, 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

"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.

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.

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

"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

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

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

"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

"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

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

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,

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

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

"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;

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.

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.

But he had no sooner made this reflection than Catherine found something; she had decided, on the

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

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

"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

"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

"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

"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."

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

"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

"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

"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

"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

"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 twentyfive, at the age of innocence and sincerity before

the age of calculation. If they only waited a little, Catherine would fare better."

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

"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

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

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

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 twentytwo, 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

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 fatherinlaw. 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

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

"That is very well, but it is not quite what I should have liked you to say. I should have liked you

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

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

"He doesn't like me he doesn't like me at all," said Morris Townsend, addressing the aunt in the

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

"Ah, you say the right thing!" said Morris, greatly to the gratification of Mrs. Penniman, who

The doctor, the next time he saw his sister Elizabeth, let her know that he had made the

"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

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

"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

"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."

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 selfoblivion. 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

selfeffacement 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

"Be so good as to let me know what is going on in the house," he said to her, in a tone which,

"Going on, Austin?" Mrs. Penniman exclaimed. "Why, I am sure I don't know. I believe that last

"At her age?" said the doctor. "The idea is startling almost shocking. Be so good as to see that

"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

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

"I don't pretend to be graceful, though I try to be neat. Why haven't you let me know that Mr.

"Three times, then, or five times, if you prefer it. I am away all day, and I see nothing. But when

Mrs. Penniman, with her eyebrows still raised, reflected intently. "Dear Austin," she said at last, "I

"Never fear; you shall not suffer. To whose confidence is it you allude? Has Catherine made you

"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.

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

"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

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

"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

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,

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

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."

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

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

"Deeply sincere. He has said to me the most appreciative, the most charming things about her. He

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

Her brother puffed his cigar again in silence. "These delicate qualities have survived his

"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."

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

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

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

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

"Precisely. He is looking for it here over there in the front parlor. The position of husband of a

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 weakminded woman you are particularly mistaken!" And with this she moved majestically

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 brotherinlaw, 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

"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

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

"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

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

"Oh, a position is more than I should presume to call it," Morris Townsend answered. "That sounds

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

"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

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

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

welldisposed young man need ever despair. If he doesn't succeed in one thing, he can try another. Only, I

"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

"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

"Ah, that's very proper; family feeling is very proper," said Doctor Sloper. "I often think there is

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

"Ah, my little nephews and nieces that's the very point! I am helping to bring them up," said

"You must not be too much bent on a fortune," said the doctor. "But I assure you I will keep you in

"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.

"I should like to see his sister," he said. "What do you call her Mrs. Montgomery? I should like to

"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

"Ah no, not that; she must have trouble enough without that. But it would have its advantages, for

"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

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

"Oh, Mr. Townsend!" murmured Catherine. She trembled as she wondered what had happened

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

"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

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

A great blush on Catherine's part had been the answer to the declaration I have just quoted. She

"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."

Morris greeted this remark with an ardent murmur, in which she recognized nothing articulate but

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

"I would rather it were in the Square," the young man urged. "You know how empty it is, often.

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 chintzcovered 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.

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

"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

greenishgilt 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

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

"It is very good of you to do it first," Morris answered. "The young man the happy lover

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;

"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

"As much so as possible," Morris promised. "It won't be much use, but I shall try. I certainly would

"Ah, we must be prepared," Morris rejoined, "you especially, because for you it must come

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

The exclamation was so deprecating and touching that Morris indulged in another little

"It will be easy to be prepared for that," Catherine said. "I shall simply say that he is mistaken

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

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

"Well, if it is the worst misfortune, we are not so unhappy. Many people would not think it so bad.

Morris Townsend listened to this robust logic in silence. "I will leave my defense to you; it's a

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

"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

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

"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

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

"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

"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 clearcut, definite smile. She contemplated these objects for a

"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.

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

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

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.

Her father glanced at her an instant, removing his eyes from the fire. "I don't wonder Mr.

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

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

"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

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

"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

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

"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

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

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

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."

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

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

"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

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,

"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

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

"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

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

"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

"I should have done so," Morris answered, "if you had not had so much the appearance of leaving

"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

"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."

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

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

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

"You speak very well," said the doctor, "but that is not all that is necessary. I told Catherine

"She let me know as much, and I was very sorry to hear it. I am greatly disappointed." And Morris

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

"That has a harsh sound," said the doctor, "but it is about the truth speaking of you strictly as a

soninlaw. 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 soninlaw, I

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

"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

"Ah, yes; that is my weakness! And therefore, you mean, I am mercenary I only want your

"I don't say that. I am not obliged to say it; and to say it, save under stress of compulsion, would be

"But your daughter doesn't marry a category," Townsend urged, with his handsome smile. "She

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

"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

"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

"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 farreaching

Morris smoothed his hat it was already remarkably glossy and continued to display a

selfcontrol which, as the doctor was obliged to admit, was extremely creditable to him. But his

"If there were, I should be sorry to suggest it, for don't you see? I don't want to believe in you,"

"I see; you think I am an idler!" Morris exclaimed, a little too much in the tone of a man who has

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

"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

"Allow me to inquire what you are living on now though I admit," the doctor added, "that the

Yes, certainly, Morris's selfcontrol 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

"That you should take too much care would be quite as bad as that you should take too little.

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

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

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

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

"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

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

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

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

Morris gave a laugh. "Your opposition to my marriage is all the more cruel, then. Do you intend to

"She is past the age at which people are forbidden, and I am not a father in an oldfashioned novel.

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

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

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

"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

"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

"She is not a humbug she is an exemplary woman. She will not wish to play her brother a trick

"If she is worth talking to, she will sooner play him a trick than that he should play Catherine one.

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

"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,

"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,

"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."

"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

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

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 babyhouse, 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

selfrespecting 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 castiron 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

"It doesn't matter," he said, "for while I sat here I had time to think over what I wish to say to you,

"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."

"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

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

"I am extremely glad to see you," she said, in a tone which seemed to admit, at the same time, that

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

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

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

Mrs. Montgomery, however, smiled not at all; it was obvious that she could not take the humorous

"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

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

"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

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

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

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

"It's right to get all one can. But in this case your brother wouldn't be able. If Catherine marries

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

"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 soninlaw. If the only office of

a soninlaw 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 illadapted 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

Mrs. Montgomery's eyes expanded a little, and the doctor fancied he saw the light of admiration in

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

"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

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 ninetynine 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

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

"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

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

"One would never suppose it from your your charming house," said the doctor. "I learned from

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

"Of course you can accomplished and devoted as you are. But your brother has counted them

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

"I have often told him so," Mrs. Montgomery exclaimed, more unreservedly than she had yet

"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

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

"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

"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

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

"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?"

"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."

The doctor looked at her a little, with folded arms. "There is something I should greatly like, as a

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 firstrate," 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

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

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

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,

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

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

"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."

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 selfcontrol. 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

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 fastwhirling 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

selfcommand 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 selfcontrol, 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

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.

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

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

"He will come round afterward," said Mrs. Penniman, with extreme significance. "He cares for

"Well," rejoined Morris, "it is a fact that I wish to marry his daughter. I met him with that the other

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.

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

"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

"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

Morris extended his empty hands with a melancholy smile. "I am greatly obliged to you, but I have

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

"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

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

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

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

"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

"He is not sentimental," said Mrs. Penniman, "but, to be perfectly fair to him, I think he has, in his

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

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,

"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

Mrs. Penniman stared a little, and smiled. "Why, I have explained to you what I think would

"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,

"Oh, don't speak of that!" said Morris; and indeed it was quite superfluous, for he had

"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

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

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

"How will you go home?" Morris asked, following this vehicle with an interested eye. Mrs.

She hesitated a moment. "I think this manner would be pleasant," she said; and she continued to let

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's as you please. But Catherine's is behind; two noble windows on the second floor. I think

"I will tell her you have been here, at any rate," said Mrs. Penniman, pointing to the spot where

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

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

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.

"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

"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

"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

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.

"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

This was, to Catherine's sense, a vivid picture, and though she disapproved, she felt herself gazing

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

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

Mrs. Penniman hesitated a moment. "I will tell you what he said. He said he feared only one

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

Catherine for some time never moved; she kept her eyes on the coals. At last she raised her head

"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

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

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

"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

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

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

"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 goodnight, and withdrew to her own apartment.

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

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,

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

Catherine wished it would go on, but she herself continued: "I thought I would tell you that I have

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 goodbye, then?" her

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

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

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

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

And he held her still, with the same tenderness, looking into her face and resting his eyes on her

"I have no doubt you are unhappy just now. But it is better to be unhappy for three months and get

"It would be so; I am sure of that." She answered nothing, and he went on: "Have you no faith in

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

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

Catherine was far from saying to herself that this was an ingenious sophism; but she met the appeal

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

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

"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

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

"Your engagement will have one delightful effect upon you; it will make you extremely impatient

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.

"Give me a proof of it, then; for it is beyond a question that by engaging yourself to Morris

She turned away, feeling sick and faint; and the doctor went on: "And if you wait for it with

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

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

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

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

For some time Catherine made no answer; but finally she said, "I think Morris little by little

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

"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

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

"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."

"Exactly as you choose." And he went to the door and opened it for her to go out. The movement

"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

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

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.

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

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

"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

Mrs. Penniman threw back her head, with a certain expansion of the eye which she occasionally

"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."

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

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,

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."

"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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This hypothetical optimism gave the poor girl a pang. "No, Morris," she said, solemnly, "he looks

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

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.

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

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.

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

"Why, you must take me or leave me," said Morris, very reasonably. "You can't please your father

"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.

"His ideas, his reasons," said Catherine. "They are so so terribly strong." She trembled with the

Morris turned away, walking to the window, where he stood looking out. "You are terribly afraid

She felt no impulse to deny it, because she had no shame in it; for, if it was no honor to herself, at

"Then you don't love me not as I love you. If you fear your father more than you love me, then

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

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

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

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

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

Morris flushed, as any young man of spirit might have flushed at an imputation of baseness. "What

"It will make a difference in many things, We shall be by many thousands of dollars the poorer;

"We shall not want the money," said Catherine, "for you know I have a good deal myself."

Morris was silent awhile. "He was very positive about this, was he?" he asked at last. "He thought

"Please tell him that I care for his message as much as for that!" and Morris snapped his fingers

"Yes, Morris," said the girl, with her imagination what there was of it swimming in this happy

"Is it your belief that he will stick to it stick to it forever to this idea of disinheriting you? That

"The trouble is that if I marry you he will think I am not good. He will think that a proof."

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,'"

"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

"My dear good girl!" he exclaimed, looking down at his prize. And then he looked up again, rather

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."

"I don't know that; but she is not going to break down. She is going to drag out the engagement, in

"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

"I need to be, with all this hot blood about me. Young Townsend, indeed, is cool; I must allow him

"I can't judge him," Mrs. Almond answered, "but I am not at all surprised at Catherine."

"Say it amuses you outright. I don't see why it should be such a joke that your daughter adores

"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

"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!"

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

Morris was not in high goodhumor, 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

"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.

"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

"I was perhaps a little headlong the other day in advising you to marry immediately. I have been

"Their number is infinite!" said Mrs. Penniman, in a tone which seemed to suggest that this

"Ah, but it isn't easy to choose. My imagination is never quiet, never satisfied. It makes me a bad

"Not intentionally and who hurries off, at every risk, to make the most humble excuses."

"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 have had a terrible scene with my brother, and he threatens, if anything happens, to turn me out

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

"Wait at any rate till he is less violent. Bide your time, Mr. Townsend; remember the prize is

Morris walked along some time in silence, tapping the railings and gateposts very sharply with his

"You certainly are devilish inconsistent!" he broke out at last. "I have already got Catherine to

Mrs. Penniman was indeed inconsistent, for at this news she gave a little jump of gratification.

Mrs. Penniman, as I say, had stopped short; and she stood there with her eyes fixed brilliantly on

"Mr. Townsend," she proceeded, "shall I tell you something? Catherine loves you so much that

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.

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

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,

"I think we shall marry before very long. And probably, meanwhile, I shall see him rather often;

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

Catherine tried to follow these words, but they seemed to lead toward a vague horror from which

Her father gave her his dreadful look again, as if she were someone else. "Why do you tell me

"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

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.

Her father fixed his cold eyes upon her. "If you mean that you had better ask his leave, all that

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

"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

"Keep it to yourself, then," her father answered, more than ever determined she should go to

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

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

Her father's displeasure had cost the girl, as we know, a great deal of deepwelling 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.

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

"He thinks I will forget you," said Catherine, "that all these things will drive you out of my mind."

"Please don't say that," Catherine answered, gently, as they walked along. "Poor Father will be

Morris gave a little laugh. "Yes, I verily believe that your poor father will be disappointed. But you

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

"Doesn't he want to deceive you?" cried Morris. "It will serve him right. I really think you had

"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

"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

"It is my pride that keeps me up," said Mrs. Penniman, tapping the body of her dress, which always

"Shall I find you just the same when I come back?" she asked; though the question was not the

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

"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 goodnatured 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

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,

"If he doesn't leave it to Catherine, it certainly won't be to leave it to me," she said.

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 sightseeing 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 hardfeatured

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 snowsummits 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 doctor looked up and down the valley, swinging his stick; then he said to her, in the same low

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,

"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

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

"It has not taken me suddenly. I have been raging inwardly for the last six months. But just now

"Yes, it's very quiet," said Catherine, vaguely looking about her. "Won't you come back to the

The doctor looked round him too. "Should you like to be left in such a place as this, to starve?"

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

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

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

The doctor took several turns again while she waited. "Do you hear from him as much as ever?"

"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

This seemed a rather gross way of putting it, and something that there was of dignity in Catherine

"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

"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,

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

"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

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

"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

"Not to tell your father. He used to sit in your father's study," said Mrs. Penniman, with a little

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

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

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

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

"I don't like the way you say that," Mrs. Penniman rejoined, in a moment. "Catherine, are you

"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

"Ah, you know what I mean," said Mrs. Penniman, with a dignity to which the cashmere gave a

Mrs. Penniman took off her great shawl, and slowly folded it up. "That is very bad. You had no

"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

"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

"Well, I must say," Mrs. Penniman answered, "I never supposed you were going to give it up."

"You have grown very brave," said Mrs. Penniman, with a short laugh. "I didn't advise you to

"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?"

"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

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.

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.

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 longabsent 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

Morris continued to smile, and then he got up and walked about again. "You had better let me try

"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 of the time. You see, the idea sticks in my crop. I don't like to be beaten."

"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

"We shall have enough for our children; we shall have enough for everything. Don't you expect to

"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."

"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

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."

She hesitated to bring it out, but at last it came. "He is not very fond of me."

"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

"I don't mind about his disliking you now; I mind everything less. I feel differently; I feel separated

"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."

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

"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,

This was an easy promise to make, and Morris made it with fine effect. But for the moment he

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

"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

"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

"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."

"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

"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

"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

"His plan is to get what he can. Lavinia will have supported him a year," said Mrs. Almond. "It's so

"She will have to support him for the rest of his life, then," cried the doctor, "but without wine, as

"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

"She has not given up Mr. Townsend," said Mrs. Almond. "I saw that in the first halfminute. She

"Exactly the same; not a grain more intelligent. She didn't notice a stick or a stone all the while we

"How could she notice? She had other things to think of; they are never for an instant out of her

"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

"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

"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.

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

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 redhot 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."

"Couldn't you bring a lawsuit against him?" She wondered that this simple expedient had never

"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 wellstuffed 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

Morris walked along a moment, and then he repeated, harshly, "I must give her up!"

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

"No, I don't. I don't want to know. I have always tried to keep from knowing. It would be too

"You must console her. If you are as good a friend to me as you pretend to be, you will manage it."

"You talk of my 'pretending' to like you; but I can't pretend to hate you. I can only tell her I think

"The doctor will help you. He will be delighted at the thing being broken off; and as he is a

"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!'"

"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."

"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

"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

"Something brilliant," said Morris. "Shouldn't you like me to do something brilliant?"

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.

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

"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

"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

"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.

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, oldfashioned 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.

"I am not at all well," said Morris; and it occurred to him that, if he could only make her pity him

"I must do that." And then he added, with a sort of calculated brutality, "I don't want to owe you

"I don't want to change you," she said, gently. "I will take you as you are." And she stood looking

"You know people talk tremendously about a man's marrying a rich girl," Morris remarked. "It's

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

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

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?"

Morris attempted a natural smile. "There are some things which we can't very well bear together

He fixed his eye on her a moment, and for a part of that moment she was afraid of it. "Will you

"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."

"I don't earn my living with you," said Morris. "Or, rather," he cried, with a sudden inspiration,

This ought perhaps to have been a great stroke, but it miscarried. "Where are you going?"

"Do you suppose I would take you to a nest of yellow fever?" cried Morris. "Do you suppose I

"It is to make six thousand dollars," said Morris. "Do you grudge me that satisfaction?"

"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

"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

Morris bethought himself a little. "Very well, then; we won't talk about it anymore. I will transact

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

But, as usual, she conceded everything. "No, I am not discreet; I know I am too pressing. But isn't

"In a moment you may do a great deal of harm. Try and be calmer the next time I come."

"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

Morris bent his head and kissed her forehead. "When you are quiet, you are perfection," he said,

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;

"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

"If I am prevented from coming tomorrow, you will say I have deceived you," he said.

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,

"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 wouldn't say that if you didn't mean something. What is it? What has happened? What have I

"Dear Catherine," he said, "don't believe that. I promise you that you shall see me again." And he

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, clearcolored 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

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 clearcut 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

"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.

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

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

"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

"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

"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."

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

"I am sure you have a secret," said Mrs. Penniman, with great significance, looking at her rather

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

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

"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?"

"My poor child," Mrs. Penniman insisted, "you can't deceive me. I know everything. I have been

"It will relieve you. Don't you know Shakespeare's lines 'The grief that does not speak'! My dear

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

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

This suggestiveness was lost upon Catherine, who repeated her violent inquiry. "Why do you talk

"We must study resignation," said Mrs. Penniman, hesitating, but sententious at a venture.

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.

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?"

"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

Mrs. Penniman was silent an instant. "I suppose that's the reason you went to see him this

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

"They said he had left town. I asked no more questions; I was ashamed," said Catherine, simply

"You needn't have taken so compromising a step if you had had a little more confidence in me,"

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

"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

"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

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

"Yes; and that was the way you worried him; you made him tired of my very name! I wish you had

"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

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

"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

Catherine listened to this with her eyes fixed upon her aunt, and continued to gaze at her for some

"He told me to say many things all so delicate, so discriminating; and he told me to tell you he

"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

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."

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

"I am delighted he is not to marry her," said Mrs. Almond, "but he ought to be horsewhipped all

Mrs. Penniman, who was shocked at her sister's coarseness, replied that he had been actuated by

"I am very happy that Catherine is not to be impoverished but I hope he may never have a penny

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

Catherine stood there, with her hand on the knob, looking at her aunt, but not asking her to come

"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.

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,

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

"It doesn't seem to me that you are treating me just now with all the consideration I deserve," he

"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."

"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

"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

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

"It would be a convenience to me to know when I may expect to have an empty house," he went

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

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

"You mean you don't care? You are rather cruel, after encouraging him and playing with him for

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

"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

"I am gentle with her. But I can't do the pathetic; I can't pump up tears, to look graceful, over the

"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

"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

"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."

"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

"It is interesting to know that you accuse your only daughter of being the vilest of hypocrites," said

"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

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

selfpossession. 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 oldfashioned 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

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

One day, after his return from Europe, the doctor said something to his daughter that made her

"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

This was what made Catherine start, as I have said; but her start was a silent one, and for some

"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

"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

"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.

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

She knew herself that she was obstinate, and it gave her a certain joy. She was now a middleaged

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 illconducted sickroom, 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 welltempered 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

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

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

"Oh no," Catherine answered, "I like it very much. Only I wish it had been expressed a little

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,

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."

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

"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

matterofcourse 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

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

"Doesn't it interest you?" asked Mrs. Penniman, with a certain timorous archness.

"I was afraid you would say that. But don't you think you could get used to it? He wants so much

"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

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

"He sent you a message," said Mrs. Penniman. "I promised him to deliver it, and I must keep my

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,

"His happiness depends upon it. Is not that a good reason?" asked Mrs. Penniman, impressively.

"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

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

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

"Aunt Penniman," she said, in a tone that scared her companion, "have you taken the liberty...?"

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

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

She would never have known him. He was fortyfive 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 wellpresented 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 wellpreserved, 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

"I offend you by coming?" He was very grave; he spoke in a tone of the richest respect.

"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

"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

Something in her tone discouraged him, but in a moment he recovered himself. "Have you still

"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."

He looked at her again in silence. "I see; my presence troubles you and pains you. I will go away;

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

"Not if you think of it rightly. You had your quiet life with your father which was just what I

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,

"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

"Ah, you are angry!" cried Morris, who wished immensely that he could extort some flash of

"No, I am not angry. Anger does not last that way for years. But there are other things. Impressions

Morris stood stroking his beard, with a clouded eye. "Why have you never married?" he asked,

Morris looked vaguely round him, and gave a deep sigh. "Well, I was in hopes that we might still

"I meant to tell you, by my aunt, in answer to your message if you had waited for an answer that

He bowed, and she turned away standing there, averted, with her eyes on the ground, for some

In the hall he found Mrs. Penniman, fluttered and eager; she appeared to have been hovering there

Morris took no notice of her question; he stood musing an instant, with his hat on. "But why the

"Yes why indeed?" sighed Mrs. Penniman. And then, as if from a sense of the inadequacy of this

"Come back? Damnation!" And Morris Townsend strode out of the house, leaving Mrs. Penniman

Catherine, meanwhile, in the parlor, picking up her morsel of fancywork, had seated herself with it