WASHINGTON SQUARE


By Henry James


Chapter 1

During a portion of the first half of the present century, and more 
particularly during the latter part of it, there flourished and practised 
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 honour, 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 recognised sources of credit. It 
belongs to the realm of the practical, which in the United States is a 
great recommendation; and it is touched by the light of science - a merit 
appreciated in a community in which the love of knowledge has not always 
been accompanied by leisure and opportunity.
It was an element in Doctor Sloper's reputation that his learning and his 
skill were very evenly balanced; he was what you might call a scholarly 
doctor, and yet there was nothing abstract in his remedies - he always 
ordered you to take something. Though he was felt to be extremely thorough, 
he was not uncomfortably theoretic; and if he sometimes explained matters 
rather more minutely than might seem of use to the patient, he never went 
so far (like some practitioners one had heard of) as to trust to the 
explanation alone, but always left behind him an inscrutable prescription. 
There were some doctors that left the prescription without offering any 
explanation at all; and he did not belong to that class either, which was 
after all the most vulgar. It will be seen that I am describing a clever 
man; and this is really the reason why Doctor Sloper had become a local 
celebrity.
At the time at which we are chiefly concerned with him he was some fifty 
years of age, and his popularity was at its height. He was very witty, and 
he passed in the best society of New York for a man of the world - which, 
indeed, he was, in a very sufficient degree. I hasten to add, to anticipate 
possible misconception, that he was not the least of a charlatan. He was a 
thoroughly honest man - honest in a degree of which he had perhaps lacked 
the opportunity to give the complete measure; and, putting aside the great 
good nature of the circle in which he practised, which was rather fond of 
boasting that it possessed the "brightest" doctor in the country, he daily 
justified his claim to the talents attributed to him by the popular voice. 
He was an observer, even a philosopher, and to be bright was so natural to 
him, and (as the popular voice said) came so easily, that he never aimed at 
mere effect, and had none of the little tricks and pretensions of second-
rate reputations. It must be confessed that fortune had favoured him, and 
that he had found the path to prosperity very soft to his tread. He had 
married, at the age of twenty-seven, for love, a very charming girl, Miss 
Catherine Harrington, of New York, who, in addition to her charms, had 
brought him a solid dowry. Mrs. Sloper was amiable, graceful, accomplished, 
elegant, and in 1820 she had been one of the pretty girls of the small but 
promising capital which clustered about the Battery and overlooked the Bay, 
and of which the uppermost boundary was indicated by the grassy waysides of 
Canal Street. Even at the age of twenty-seven Austin Sloper had made his 
mark sufficiently to mitigate the anomaly of his having been chosen among a 
dozen suitors by a young woman of high fashion, who had ten thousand 
dollars of income and the most charming eyes in the island of Manhattan. 
These eyes, and some of their accompaniments, were for about five years a 
source of extreme satisfaction to the young physician, who was both a 
devoted and a very happy husband.
The fact of his having married a rich woman made no difference in the line 
he had traced for himself, and he cultivated his profession with as 
definite a purpose as if he still had no other resources than his fraction 
of the modest patrimony which, on his father's death, he had shared with 
his brothers and sisters. This purpose had not been preponderantly to make 
money - it had been rather to learn something and to do something. To learn 
something interesting, and to do something useful - this was, roughly 
speaking, the program he had sketched, and of which the accident of his 
wife having an income appeared to him in no degree to modify the validity. 
He was fond of his practice, and of exercising a skill of which he was 
agreeably conscious, and it was so patent a truth that if he were not a 
doctor there was nothing else he could be, that a doctor he persisted in 
being, in the of best possible conditions. Of course his easy domestic 
situation saved him a good deal of drudgery, and his wife's affiliation to 
the "best people" brought him a good many of those patients whose symptoms 
are, if not more interesting in themselves than those of the lower orders, 
at least more consistently displayed. He desired experience, and in the 
course of twenty years he got a great deal. It must be added that it came 
to him in some forms which, whatever might have been their intrinsic value, 
made it the reverse of welcome. His first child, a little boy of 
extraordinary promise, as the doctor, who was not addicted to easy 
enthusiasm, firmly believed, died at three years of age, in spite of 
everything that the mother's tenderness and the father's science could 
invent to save him. Two years later Mrs. Sloper gave birth to a second 
infant - an infant of a sex which rendered the poor child, to the doctor's 
sense, an inadequate substitute for his lamented firstborn, of whom he had 
promised himself to make an admirable man. The little girl was a 
disappointment; but this was not the worst. A week after her birth the 
young mother, who, as the phrase is, had been doing well, suddenly betrayed 
alarming symptoms, and before another week had elapsed Austin Sloper was a 
widower.
For a man whose trade was to keep people alive he had certainly done poorly 
in his own family; and a bright doctor who within three years loses his 
wife and his little boy should perhaps be prepared to see either his skill 
or his affection impugned. Our friend, however, escaped criticism; that is, 
he escaped all criticism but his own, which was much the most competent and 
most formidable. He walked under the weight of this very private censure 
for the rest of his days, and bore forever the scars of a castigation to 
which the strongest hand he knew had treated him on the night that followed 
his wife's death. The world, which, as I have said, appreciated him, pitied 
him too much to be ironical; his misfortune made him more interesting, and 
even helped him to be the fashion. It was observed that even medical 
families cannot escape the more insidious forms of disease, and that, after 
all, Doctor Sloper had lost other patients besides the two I have 
mentioned; which constituted an honourable precedent. His little girl 
remained to him; and though she was not what he had desired, he proposed to 
himself to make the best of her. He had on hand a stock of unexpended 
authority, by which the child, in its early years, profited largely. She 
had been named, as a matter of course, after her poor mother, and even in 
her most diminutive babyhood the doctor never called her anything but 
Catherine. She grew up a very robust and healthy child, and her father, as 
he looked at her, often said to himself that, such as she was, he at least 
need have no fear of losing her. I say "such as she was," because, to tell 
the truth - But this is a truth of which I will defer the telling.


Chapter 2

When the child was about ten years old, he invited his sister, Mrs. 
Penniman, to come and stay with him. The Miss Slopers had been but two in 
number, and both of them had married early in life. The younger, Mrs. 
Almond by name, was the wife of a prosperous merchant and the mother of a 
blooming family. She bloomed herself, indeed, and was a comely, 
comfortable, reasonable woman, and a favourite with her clever brother, 
who, in the matter of women, even when they were nearly related to him, was 
a man of distinct preferences. He preferred Mrs. Almond to his sister 
Lavinia, who had married a poor clergyman, of a sickly constitution and a 
flowery style of eloquence, and then, at the age of thirty-three, had been 
left a widow - without children, without fortune - with nothing but the 
memory of Mr. Penniman's flowers of speech, a certain vague aroma of which 
hovered about her own conversation. Nevertheless, he had offered her a home 
under his own roof, which Lavinia accepted with the alacrity of a woman who 
had spent the ten years of her married life in the town of Poughkeepsie. 
The doctor had not proposed to Mrs. Penniman to come and live with him 
indefinitely; he had suggested that she should make an asylum of his house 
while she looked about for unfurnished lodgings. It is uncertain whether 
Mrs. Penniman ever instituted a search for unfurnished lodgings, but it is 
beyond dispute that she never found them. She settled herself with her 
brother and never went away, and, when Catherine was twenty years old, her 
Aunt Lavinia was still one of the most striking features of her immediate 
entourage. Mrs. Penniman's own account of the matter was that she had 
remained to take charge of her niece's education. She had given this 
account, at least, to everyone but the doctor, who never asked for 
explanations which he could entertain himself any day with inventing. Mrs. 
Penniman, moreover, though she had a good deal of a certain sort of 
artificial assurance, shrunk, for indefinable reasons, from presenting 
herself to her brother as a fountain of instruction. She had not a high 
sense of humour, 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 
lustre. 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, meagrely gratified by what he 
observed in his female patients. His wife had been a reasonable woman, but 
she was a bright exception; among several things that he was sure of, this 
was perhaps the principal. Such a conviction, of course, did little either 
to mitigate or to abbreviate his widowhood; and it set a limit to his 
recognition, at the best, of Catherine's possibilities and of Mrs. 
Penniman's ministrations. He nevertheless, at the end of six months, 
accepted his sister's permanent presence as an accomplished fact, and as 
Catherine grew older, perceived that there were in effect good reasons why 
she should have a companion of her own imperfect sex. He was extremely 
polite to Lavinia, scrupulously, formally polite; and she had never seen 
him in anger but once in her life, when he lost his temper in a theological 
discussion with her late husband. With her he never discussed theology, 
nor, indeed, discussed anything; he contented himself with making known, 
very distinctly, in the form of a lucid ultimatum, his wishes with regard 
to Catherine.
Once, when the girl was about twelve years old, he had said to her:
"Try and make a clever woman of her, Lavinia; I should like her to be a 
clever woman."
Mrs. Penniman, at this, looked thoughtful a moment. "My dear Austin," she 
then inquired, "do you think it is better to be clever than to be good?"
"Good for what?" asked the doctor. "You are good for nothing unless you are 
clever."
From this assertion Mrs. Penniman saw no reason to dissent; she possibly 
reflected that her own great use in the world was owing to her aptitude for 
many things.
"Of course I wish Catherine to be good," the doctor said next day, "but she 
won't be any the less virtuous for not being a fool. I am not afraid of her 
being wicked; she will never have the salt of malice in her character. She 
is 'as good as good bread,' as the French say; but six years hence I don't 
want to have to compare her to good bread and butter."
"Are you afraid she will be insipid? My dear brother, it is I who supply 
the butter; so you needn't fear!" said Mrs. Penniman, who had taken in hand 
the child's "accomplishments," overlooking her at the piano, where 
Catherine displayed a certain talent, and going with her to the dancing 
class, where it must be confessed that she made but a modest figure.
Mrs. Penniman was a tall, thin, fair, rather faded woman, with a perfectly 
amiable disposition, a high standard of gentility, a taste for light 
literature, and a certain foolish indirectness and obliquity of character. 
She was romantic; she was sentimental; she had a passion for little secrets 
and mysteries - a very innocent passion, for her secrets had hitherto 
always been as unpractical as addled eggs. She was not absolutely 
veracious; but this defect was of no great consequence, for she had never 
had anything to conceal. She would have liked to have a lover, and to 
correspond with him under an assumed name, in letters left at a shop. I am 
bound to say that her imagination never carried the intimacy further than 
this. Mrs. Penniman had never had a lover, but her brother, who was very 
shrewd, understood her turn of mind. "When Catherine is about seventeen," 
he said to himself, "Lavinia will try and persuade her that some young man 
with a moustache is in love with her. It will be quite untrue; no young 
man, with a moustache or without, will ever be in love with Catherine. But 
Lavinia will take it up, and talk to her about it; perhaps, even, if her 
taste for clandestine operations doesn't prevail with her, she will talk to 
me about it. Catherine won't see it, and won't believe it, fortunately for 
her peace of mind; poor Catherine isn't romantic."
She was a healthy, well-grown child, without a trace of her mother's 
beauty. She was not ugly; she had simply a plain, dull, gentle countenance. 
The most that had ever been said for her was that she had a "nice" face; 
and, though she was an heiress, no one had ever thought of regarding her as 
a belle. Her father's opinion of her moral purity was abundantly justified; 
she was excellently, imperturbably good; affectionate, docile, obedient, 
and much addicted to speaking the truth. In her younger years she was a 
good deal of a romp, and, though it is an awkward confession to make about 
one's heroine, I must add that she was something of a glutton. She never, 
that I know of, stole raisins out of the pantry; but she devoted her pocket 
money to the purchase of cream cakes. As regards this, however, a critical 
attitude would be inconsistent with a candid reference to the early annals 
of any biographer. Catherine was decidedly not clever; she was not quick 
with her book, nor, indeed, with anything else. She was not abnormally 
deficient, and she mustered learning enough to acquit herself respectably 
in conversation with her contemporaries - among whom it must be avowed, 
however, that she occupied a secondary place. It is well known that in New 
York it is possible for a young girl to occupy a primary one. Catherine, 
who was extremely modest, had no desire to shine, and on most social 
occasions, as they are called, you would have found her lurking in the 
background. She was extremely fond of her father, and very much afraid of 
him; she thought him the cleverest and handsomest and most celebrated of 
men. The poor girl found her account so completely in the exercise of her 
affections that the little tremor of fear that mixed itself with her filial 
passion gave the thing an extra relish rather than blunted its edge. Her 
deepest desire was to please him, and her conception of happiness was to 
know that she had succeeded in pleasing him. She had never succeeded beyond 
a certain point. Though, on the whole, he was very kind to her, she was 
perfectly aware of this, and to go beyond the point in question seemed to 
her really something to live for. What she could not know, of course, was 
that she disappointed him, though on three or four occasions the doctor had 
been almost frank about it. She grew up peacefully and prosperously; but at 
the age of eighteen, Mrs. Penniman had not made a clever woman of her. 
Doctor Sloper would have liked to be proud of his daughter; but there was 
nothing to be proud of in poor Catherine. There was nothing, of course, to 
be ashamed of; but this was not enough for the doctor, who was a proud man, 
and would have enjoyed being able to think of his daughter as an unusual 
girl. There would have been a fitness in her being pretty and graceful, 
intelligent and distinguished - for her mother had been the most charming 
woman of her little day - and as regards her father, of course he knew his 
own value. He had moments of irritation at having produced a commonplace 
child, and he even went so far at times as to take a certain satisfaction 
in the thought that his wife had not lived to find her out. He was 
naturally slow in making this discovery himself, and it was not till 
Catherine had become a young lady grown that he regarded the matter as 
settled. He gave her the benefit of a great many doubts; he was in no haste 
to conclude. Mrs. Penniman frequently assured him that his daughter had a 
delightful nature; but he knew how to interpret this assurance. It meant, 
to his sense, that Catherine was not wise enough to discover that her aunt 
was a goose - a limitation of mind that could not fail to be agreeable to 
Mrs. Penniman. Both she and her brother, however, exaggerated the young 
girl's limitations; for Catherine, though she was very fond of her aunt, 
and conscious of the gratitude she owed her, regarded her without a 
particle of that gentle dread which gave its stamp to her admiration of her 
father. To her mind there was nothing of the infinite about Mrs. Penniman; 
Catherine saw her all at once, as it were, and was not dazzled by the 
apparition; whereas her father's great faculties seemed, as they stretched 
away, to lose themselves in a sort of luminous vagueness, which indicated, 
not that they stopped, but that Catherine's own mind ceased to follow them.
It must not be supposed that Doctor Sloper visited his disappointment upon 
the poor girl, or ever let her suspect that she had played him a trick. On 
the contrary, for fear of being unjust to her, he did his duty with 
exemplary zeal, and recognised that she was a faithful and affectionate 
child. Besides, he was a philosopher: He smoked a good many cigars over his 
disappointment, and in the fullness of time he got used to it. He satisfied 
himself that he had expected nothing, though, indeed, with a certain oddity 
of reasoning. "I expect nothing," he said to himself, "so that, if she 
gives me a surprise, it will be all clear gain. If she doesn't, it will be 
no loss." This was about the time Catherine had reached her eighteenth 
year; so that it will be seen her father had not been precipitate. At this 
time she seemed not only incapable of giving surprises; it was almost a 
question whether she could have received one - she was so quiet and 
irresponsive. People who expressed themselves roughly called her stolid. 
But she was irresponsive because she was shy, uncomfortably, painfully shy. 
This was not always understood, and she sometimes produced an impression of 
insensibility. In reality, she was the softest creature in the world.



Chapter 3

As a child she had promised to be tall; but when she was sixteen she ceased 
to grow, and her stature, like most other points in her composition, was 
not unusual. She was strong, however, and properly made, and, fortunately, 
her health was excellent. It has been noted that the doctor was a 
philosopher, but I would not have answered for his philosophy if the poor 
girl had proved a sickly and suffering person. Her appearance of health 
constituted her principal claim to beauty; and her clear, fresh complexion, 
in which white and red were very equally distributed, was, indeed, an 
excellent thing to see. Her eye was small and quiet, her features were 
rather thick, her tresses brown and smooth. A dull, plain girl she was 
called by rigorous critics - a quiet, ladylike girl, by those of the more 
imaginative sort; but by neither class was she very elaborately discussed. 
When it had been duly impressed upon her that she was a young lady - it was 
a good while before she could believe it - she suddenly developed a lively 
taste for dress. A lively taste is quite the expression to use. I feel as 
if I ought to write it very small, her judgement in this matter was by no 
means infallible; it was liable to confusions and embarrassments. Her great 
indulgence of it was really the desire of a rather inarticulate nature to 
manifest itself; she sought to be eloquent in her garments, and to make up 
for her diffidence of speech by a fine frankness of costume. But if she 
expressed herself in her clothes, it is certain that people were not to 
blame for not thinking her a witty person. It must be added that, though 
she had the expectation of a fortune - Doctor Sloper for a long time had 
been making twenty thousand dollars a year by his profession, and laying 
aside the half of it - the amount of money at her disposal was not greater 
than the allowance made to many poorer girls. In those days, in New York, 
there were still a few altar fires flickering in the temple of republican 
simplicity, and Doctor Sloper would have been glad to see his daughter 
present herself, with a classic grace, as a priestess of this mild faith. 
It made him fairly grimace, in private, to think that a child of his should 
be both ugly and overdressed. For himself, he was fond of the good things 
of life, and he made a considerable use of them; but he had a dread of 
vulgarity, and even a theory that it was increasing in the society that 
surrounded him. Moreover, the standard of luxury in the United States 
thirty years ago was carried by no means so high as at present, and 
Catherine's clever father took the old-fashioned view of the education of 
young persons. He had no particular theory on the subject; it had scarcely 
as yet become a necessity of self-defence to have a collection of theories. 
It simply appeared to him proper and reasonable that a well-bred young 
woman should not carry half her fortune on her back. Catherine's back was a 
broad one, and would have carried a good deal; but to the weight of the 
paternal displeasure she never ventured to expose it, and our heroine was 
twenty years old before she treated herself, for evening wear, to a red 
satin gown trimmed with gold fringe, though this was an article which, for 
many years, she had coveted in secret. It made her look, when she sported 
it, like a woman of thirty; but oddly enough, in spite of her taste for 
fine clothes, she had not a grain of coquetry, and her anxiety when she put 
them on was as to whether they, and not she, would look well. It is a point 
on which history has not been explicit, but the assumption is warrantable; 
it was in the royal raiment just mentioned that she presented herself at a 
little entertainment given by her aunt, Mrs. Almond. The girl was at this 
time in her twenty-first year, and Mrs. Almond's party was the beginning of 
something very important.
Some three or four years before this, Doctor Sloper had moved his household 
gods uptown, as they say in New York. He had been living ever since his 
marriage in an edifice of red brick, with granite copings and an enormous 
fanlight over the door, standing in a street within five minutes' walk of 
the City Hall, which saw its best days (from the social point of view) 
about 1820. After this, the tide of fashion began to set steadily 
northward, as, indeed, in New York, thanks to the narrow channel in which 
it flows, it is obliged to do, and the great hum of traffic rolled farther 
to the right and left of Broadway. By the time the doctor changed his 
residence, the murmur of trade had become a mighty uproar, which was music 
in the ears of all good citizens interested in the commercial development, 
as they delighted to call it, of their fortunate isle. Doctor Sloper's 
interest in this phenomenon was only indirect - though, seeing that, as the 
years went on, half his patients came to be overworked men of business, it 
might have been more immediate - and when most of his neighbours' dwellings 
(also ornamented with granite copings and large fanlights) had been 
converted into offices, warehouses, and shipping agencies, and otherwise 
applied to the base uses of commerce, he determined to look out for a 
quieter home. The ideal of quiet and of genteel retirement, in 1835, was 
found in Washington Square, where the doctor built himself a handsome, 
modern, wide-fronted house, with a big balcony before the drawing-room 
windows, and a flight of white marble steps ascending to a portal which was 
also faced with white marble. This structure, and many of its neighbours, 
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 honourable 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 honourable 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 odour of the ailanthus trees which at that time 
formed the principal umbrage of the Square, and diffused an aroma that you 
were not yet critical enough to dislike as it deserved; it was here, 
finally, that your first school, kept by a broad-bosomed, broad-based old 
lady with a ferule, who was always having tea in a blue cup, with a saucer 
that didn't match, enlarged the circle both of your observations and your 
sensations. It was here, at any rate, that my heroine spent many years of 
her life; which is my excuse for this topographical parenthesis.
Mrs. Almond lived much farther uptown, in an embryonic street, with a high 
number - a region where the extension of the city began to assume a 
theoretic air, where poplars grew beside the pavement (when there was one), 
and mingled their shade with the steep roofs of desultory Dutch houses, and 
where pigs and chickens disported themselves in the gutter. These elements 
of rural picturesqueness have now wholly departed from New York street 
scenery; but they were to be found within the memory of middle-aged persons 
in quarters which now would blush to be reminded of them. Catherine had a 
great many cousins, and with her Aunt Almond's children, who ended by being 
nine in number, she lived on terms of considerable intimacy. When she was 
younger they had been rather afraid of her; she was believed, as the phrase 
is, to be highly educated, and a person who lived in the intimacy of their 
Aunt Penniman had something of reflected grandeur. Mrs. Penniman, among the 
little Almonds, was an object of more admiration than sympathy. Her manners 
were strange and formidable, and her mourning robes - she dressed in black 
for twenty years after her husband's death, and then suddenly appeared, one 
morning, with pink roses in her cap - were complicated in odd, unexpected 
places with buckles, bugles, and pins, which discouraged familiarity. She 
took children too hard, both for good and for evil, and had an oppressive 
air of expecting subtle things of them; so that going to see her was a good 
deal like being taken to church and made to sit in a front pew. It was 
discovered after awhile, however, that Aunt Penniman was but an accident in 
Catherine's existence, and not a part of its essence, and that when the 
girl came to spend a Saturday with her cousins, she was available for 
follow-my-master, and even for leapfrog. On this basis an understanding was 
easily arrived at, and for several years Catherine fraternised with her 
young kinsmen. I say young kinsmen, because seven of the little Almonds 
were boys, and Catherine had a preference for those games which are most 
conveniently played in trousers. By degrees, however, the little Almonds' 
trousers began to lengthen, and the wearers to disperse and settle 
themselves in life. The elder children were older than Catherine, and the 
boys were sent to college or placed in counting rooms. Of the girls, one 
married very punctually, and the other as punctually became engaged. It was 
to celebrate this latter event that Mrs. Almond gave the little party I 
have mentioned. Her daughter was to marry a stout young stockbroker, a boy 
of twenty: it was thought a very good thing.



Chapter 4

Mrs Penniman, with more buckles and bangles than ever, came, of course, to 
the entertainment, accompanied by her niece; the doctor, too, had promised 
to look in later in the evening. There was to be a good deal of dancing, 
and before it had gone very far Marian Almond came up to Catherine, in 
company with a tall young man. She introduced the young man as a person who 
had a great desire to make your heroine's acquaintance, and as a cousin of 
Arthur Townsend, her own intended.
Marian Almond was a pretty little person of seventeen, with a very small 
figure and a very big sash, to the elegance of whose manners matrimony had 
nothing to add. She already had all the airs of a hostess, receiving the 
company, shaking her fan, saying that with so many people to attend to she 
should have no time to dance. She made a long speech about Mr. Townsend's 
cousin, to whom she administered a tap with her fan before turning away to 
other cares. Catherine had not understood all that she said; her attention 
was given to enjoying Marian's ease of manner and flow of ideas, and to 
looking at the young man, who was remarkably handsome. She had succeeded, 
however, as she often failed to do when people were presented to her, in 
catching his name, which appeared to be the same as that of Marian's little 
stockbroker. Catherine was always agitated by an introduction; it seemed a 
difficult moment, and she wondered that some people - her new acquaintance 
at this moment, for instance - should mind it so little. She wondered what 
she ought to say, and what would be the consequences of her saying nothing. 
The consequences at present were very agreeable. Mr. Townsend, leaving her 
no time for embarrassment, began to talk to her with an easy smile, as if 
he had known her for a year.
"What a delightful party! What a charming house! What an interesting 
family! What a pretty girl your cousin is!"
These observations, in themselves of no great profundity, Mr. Townsend 
seemed to offer for what they were worth, and as a contribution to an 
acquaintance. He looked straight into Catherine's eyes. She answered 
nothing; she only listened, and looked at him; and he, as if he expected no 
particular reply, went on to say many other things in the same comfortable 
and natural manner. Catherine, though she felt tongue-tied, was conscious 
of no embarrassment; it seemed proper that he should talk, and that she 
should simply look at him. What made it natural was that he was so 
handsome, or, rather, as she phrased it to herself, so beautiful. The music 
had been silent for awhile, but it suddenly began again; and then he asked 
her, with a deeper, intenser smile, if she would do him the honour of 
dancing with him. Even to this inquiry she gave no audible assent; she 
simply let him put his arm round her waist - as she did so, it occurred to 
her more vividly than it had ever done before that this was a singular 
place for a gentleman's arm to be - and in a moment he was guiding her 
round the room in the harmonious rotation of the polka. When they paused, 
she felt that she was red; and then, for some moments, she stopped looking 
at him. She fanned herself, and looked at the flowers that were painted on 
her fan. He asked her if she would begin again, and she hesitated to 
answer, still looking at the
"Does it make you dizzy?" he asked, in a tone of great kindness.
Then Catherine looked up at him; he was certainly beautiful, and not at all 
red. "Yes," she said; she hardly knew why, for dancing had never made her 
dizzy.
"Ah, well, in that case," said Mr. Townsend, "we will sit still and talk. I 
will find a good place to sit."
He found a good place - a charming place, a little sofa that seemed meant 
only for two persons. The rooms by this time were very full; the dancers 
increased in number, and people stood close in front of them, turning their 
backs, so that Catherine and her companion seemed secluded and unobserved. 
"We will talk," the young man had said, but he still did all the talking. 
Catherine leaned back in her place, with her eyes fixed upon him, smiling, 
and thinking him very clever. He had features like young men in pictures; 
Catherine had never seen such features - so delicate, so chiselled 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 colour. He 
had never been at Mrs. Almond's before; he felt very much like a stranger; 
and it was very kind of Catherine to take pity on him. He was Arthur 
Townsend's cousin - not very near, several times removed - and Arthur had 
brought him to present him to the family. In fact, he was a great stranger 
in New York. It was his native place; but he had not been there for many 
years. He had been knocking about the world, and living in queer corners; 
he had only come back a month or two before. New York was very pleasant, 
only he felt lonely.
"You see, people forget you," he said, smiling at Catherine with his 
delightful gaze, while he leaned forward obliquely, turning toward her, 
with his elbows on his knees.
It seemed to Catherine that no one who had once seen him would ever forget 
him; but though she made this reflection she kept it to herself; almost as 
you would keep something precious.
They sat there for some time. He was very amusing. He asked her about the 
people that were near them; he tried to guess who some of them were, and he 
made the most laughable mistakes. He criticised them very freely, in a 
positive, offhand way. Catherine had never heard anyone - especially any 
young man - talk just like that. It was the way a young man might talk in a 
novel, or, better still, in a play, on the stage, close before the 
footlights, looking at the audience, and with everyone looking at him, so 
that you wondered at his presence of mind. And yet Mr. Townsend was not 
like an actor; he seemed so sincere, so natural. This was very interesting; 
but in the midst of it Marian Almond came pushing through the crowd, with a 
little ironical cry, when she found these young people still together, 
which made everyone turn round, and cost Catherine a conscious blush. 
Marian broke up their talk, and told Mr. Townsend - whom she treated as if 
she were already married, and he had become her cousin - to run away to her 
mother, who had been wishing for the last half hour to introduce him to Mr. 
Almond.
"We shall meet again," he said to Catherine as he left her, and Catherine 
thought it a very original speech.
Her cousin took her by the arm, and made her walk about. "I needn't ask you 
what you think of Morris," the young girl exclaimed.
"Is that his name?"
"I don't ask you what you think of his name, but what you think of 
himself," said Marian.
"Oh, nothing particular," Catherine answered, dissembling for the first 
time in her life.
"I have half a mind to tell him that!" cried Marian. "It will do him good; 
he's so terribly conceited."
"Conceited?" said Catherine, staring.
"So Arthur says, and Arthur knows about him."
"Oh, don't tell him!" Catherine murmured, imploringly.
"Don't tell him he's conceited! I have told him so a dozen times."
At this profession of audacity Catherine looked down at her little 
companion in amazement. She supposed it was because Marian was going to be 
married that she took so much on herself; but she wondered too, whether, 
when she herself should become engaged, such exploits would be expected of 
her.
Half an hour later she saw her Aunt Penniman sitting in the embrasure of a 
window, with her head a little on one side, and her gold eyeglass raised to 
her eyes, which were wandering about the room. In front of her was a 
gentleman, bending forward a little, with his back turned to Catherine. She 
knew his back immediately, though she had never seen it; for when he left 
her, at Marian's instigation, he had retreated in the best order, without 
turning round. Morris Townsend - the name had already become very familiar 
to her, as if someone had been repeating it in her ear for the last half 
hour - Morris Townsend was giving his impressions of the company to her 
aunt, as he had done to herself; he was saying clever things, and Mrs. 
Penniman was smiling, as if she approved of them. As soon as Catherine had 
perceived this she moved away; she would not have liked him to turn round 
and see her. But it gave her pleasure - the whole thing. That he should 
talk with Mrs. Penniman, with whom she lived and whom she saw and talked 
with every day - that seemed to keep him near her, and to make him even 
easier to contemplate than if she herself had been the object of his 
civilities; and that Aunt Lavinia should like him, should not be shocked or 
startled by what he said, this also appeared to the girl a personal gain; 
for Aunt Lavinia's standard was extremely high, planted as it was over the 
grave of her late husband, in which, as she had convinced everyone, the 
very genius of conversation was buried. One of the Almond boys, as 
Catherine called them, invited our heroine to dance a quadrille, and for a 
quarter of an hour her feet at least were occupied. This time she was not 
dizzy; her head was very clear. Just when the dance was over, she found 
herself in the crowd face to face with her father. Doctor Sloper had 
usually a little smile, never a very big one, and with this little smile 
playing in his clear eyes and on his neatly shaved lips, he looked at his 
daughter's crimson gown.
"Is it possible that this magnificent person is my child?" he said.
You would have surprised him if you had told him so, but it is a literal 
fact that he almost never addressed his daughter save in the ironical form. 
Whenever he addressed her he gave her pleasure; but she had to cut her 
pleasure out of the pieces, as it were. There were portions left over, 
light remnants and snippets of irony, which she never knew what to do with, 
which seemed too delicate for her own use; and yet Catherine, lamenting the 
limitations of her understanding, felt that they were too valuable to 
waste, and had a belief that if they passed over her head they yet 
contributed to the general sum of human wisdom.
"I am not magnificent," she said, mildly, wishing that she had put on 
another dress.
"You are sumptuous, opulent, expensive," her father rejoined. "You look as 
if you had eighty thousand a year."
"Well, so long as I haven't,-" said Catherine, illogically. Her conception 
of her prospective wealth was as yet very indefinite.
"So long as you haven't you shouldn't look as if you had. Have you enjoyed 
your party!"
Catherine hesitated a moment; and then, looking away, "I am rather tired," 
she murmured. I have said that this entertainment was, the beginning of 
something important for Catherine. For the second time in her life she made 
an indirect answer; and the beginning of a period of dissimulation is 
certainly a significant date. Catherine was not so easily tired as that.
Nevertheless, in the carriage, as they drove home, she was as quiet as if 
fatigue had been her portion. Doctor Sloper's manner of addressing his 
sister Lavinia had a good deal of resemblance to the tone he had adopted 
toward Catherine.
"Who was the young man that was making love to you?" he presently asked.
"Oh, my good brother!" murmured Mrs. Penniman, in deprecation.
"He seemed uncommonly tender. Whenever I looked at you for half an hour, he 
had the most devoted air."
"The devotion was not to me," said Mrs. Penniman. "It was to Catherine; he 
talked to me of her."
Catherine had been listening with all her ears. "Oh, Aunt Penniman!" she 
exclaimed, faintly.
"He is very handsome; he is very clever; he expressed himself with a great 
deal - a great deal of felicity," her aunt went on.
"He is in love with this regal creature, then?" the doctor inquired,
"Oh, Father!" cried the girl, still more faintly, devoutly thankful the 
carriage was dark.
"I don't know that; but he admired her dress."
Catherine did not say to herself in the dark, "My dress only?" Mrs. 
Penniman's announcement struck her by its richness, not by its meagreness.
"You see," said her father, "he thinks you have eighty thousand a year."
"I don't believe he thinks of that," said Mrs. Penniman. "He is too 
refined."
"He must be tremendously refined not to think of that!"
"Well, he is!" Catherine exclaimed, before she knew it.
"I thought you had gone to sleep," her father answered. "The hour has 
come!" he added to himself. "Lavinia is going to get up a romance for 
Catherine. It's a shame to play such tricks on the girl. What is the 
gentleman's name?" he went on, aloud.
"I didn't catch it, and I didn't like to ask him. He asked to be introduced 
to me," said Mrs. Penniman, with a certain grandeur, "but you know how 
indistinctly Jefferson speaks." Jefferson was Mr. Almond. "Catherine, dear, 
what was the gentleman's name?"
For a minute, if it had not been for the rumbling of the carriage, you 
might have heard a pin drop.
"I don't know, Aunt Lavinia," said Catherine, very softly. And, with all 
his irony, her father believed her.



Chapter 5

He learned what he had asked some three or four days later, after Morris 
Townsend, with his cousin, had called in Washington Square. Mrs. Penniman 
did not tell her brother, on the drive home, that she had intimated to this 
agreeable young man, whose name she did not know, that, with her niece, she 
should be very glad to see him; but she was greatly pleased, and even a 
little flattered, when, late on a Sunday afternoon, the two gentlemen made 
their appearance. His coming with Arthur Townsend made it more natural and 
easy; the latter young man was on the point of becoming connected with the 
family, and Mrs. Penniman had remarked to Catherine that, as he was going 
to marry Marian, it would be polite in him to call. These events came to 
pass late in the autumn, and Catherine and her aunt had been sitting 
together in the closing dusk, by the firelight, in the high back parlour.
Arthur Townsend fell to Catherine's portion, while his companion placed 
himself on the sofa beside Mrs. Penniman. Catherine had hitherto not been a 
harsh critic; she was easy to please - she liked to talk with young men. 
But Marian's betrothed, this evening, made her feel vaguely fastidious; he 
sat looking at the fire and rubbing his knees with his hands. As for 
Catherine, she scarcely even pretended to keep up the conversation; her 
attention had fixed itself on the other side of the room; she was listening 
to what went on between the other Mr. Townsend and her aunt. Every now and 
then he looked over at Catherine herself and smiled, as if to show that 
what he said was for her benefit too. Catherine would have liked to change 
her place, to go and sit near them, where she might see and hear him 
better. But she was afraid of seeming bold - of looking eager; and, 
besides, it would not have been polite to Marian's little suitor. She 
wondered why the other gentleman had picked out her aunt - how he came to 
have so much to say to Mrs. Penniman, to whom, usually, young men were not 
especially devoted. She was not at all jealous of Aunt Lavinia, but she was 
a little envious, and, above all, she wondered; for Morris Townsend was an 
object on which she found that her imagination could exercise itself 
indefinitely. His cousin had been describing a house that he had taken in 
view of his union with Marian, and the domestic conveniences he meant to 
introduce into it; how Marian wanted a larger one, and Mrs. Almond 
recommended a smaller one, and how he himself was convinced that he had got 
the neatest house in New York.
"It doesn't matter," he said. "It's only for three or four years. At the 
end of three or four years we'll move. That's the way to live in New York - 
to move every three or four years. Then you always get the last thing. It's 
because the city's growing so quick - you've got to keep up with it. It's 
going straight uptown - that's where New York's going. If I wasn't afraid 
Marian would be lonely, I'd go up there - right up to the top - and wait 
for it. Only have to wait ten years - they'll all come up after you. But 
Marian says she wants some neighbours - she doesn't want to be a pioneer. 
She says that if she's got to be the first settler she had better go out to 
Minnesota. I guess we'll move up little by little; when we get tired of one 
street we'll go higher. So you see we'll always have a new house; it's a 
great advantage to have a new house; you get all the latest improvements. 
They invent everything all over again about every five years, and it's a 
great thing to keep up with the new things. I always try and keep up with 
the new things of every kind. Don't you think that's a good motto for a 
young couple - to keep 'going higher'? What's the name of that piece of 
poetry - what do they call it? - 'Excelsior!'"
Catherine bestowed on her junior visitor only just enough attention to feel 
that this was not the way Mr. Morris Townsend had talked the other night, 
or that he was talking now to her fortunate aunt. But suddenly his aspiring 
kinsman became more interesting. He seemed to have become conscious that 
she was affected by his companion's presence, and he thought it proper to 
explain it.
"My cousin asked me to bring him, or I shouldn't have taken the liberty. He 
seemed to want very much to come; you know he's awfully sociable. I told 
him I wanted to ask you first, but he said Mrs. Penniman had invited him. 
He isn't particular what he says when he wants to come somewhere. But Mrs. 
Penniman seems to think it's all right."
"We are very glad to see him," said Catherine. And she wished to talk more 
about him, but she hardly knew what to say. "I never saw him before," she 
went on, presently.
Arthur Townsend stared.
"Why, he told me he talked with you for over half an hour the other night."
"I mean before the other night. That was the first time."
"Oh, he has been away from New York - he has been all round the world. He 
doesn't know many people here, but he's very sociable, and he wants to know 
everyone."
"Everyone?" said Catherine.
"Well, I mean all the good ones. All the pretty young ladies - like Mrs. 
Penniman!" And Arthur Townsend gave a private laugh.
"My aunt likes him very much," said Catherine.
"Most people like him - he's so brilliant."
"He's more like a foreigner," Catherine suggested.
"Well, I never knew a foreigner," said young Townsend, in a tone which 
seemed to indicate that his ignorance had been optional.
"Neither have I," Catherine confessed, with more humility. "They say they 
are generally brilliant," she added, vaguely.
"Well, the people of this city are clever enough for me. I know some of 
them that think they are too clever for me; but they ain't."
"I suppose you can't be too clever," said Catherine, still with humility.
"I don't know. I know some people that call my cousin too clever."
Catherine listened to this statement with extreme interest, and a feeling 
that if Morris Townsend had a fault it would naturally be that one. But she 
did not commit herself, and in a moment she asked, "Now that he has come 
back, will he stay here always?"
"Ah," said Arthur, "if he can get something to do."
"Something to do?"
"Some place or other; some business."
"Hasn't he got any?" said Catherine, who had never heard of a young man - 
of the upper class - in this situation.
"No, he's looking round. But he can't find anything."
"I am very sorry," Catherine permitted herself to observe.
"Oh, he doesn't mind," said young Townsend. "He takes it easy - he isn't in 
a hurry. He is very particular."
Catherine thought he naturally would be, and gave herself up for some 
moments to the contemplation of this idea, in several of its bearings.
"Won't his father take him into his business - his office?" she at last 
inquired.
"He hasn't got any father - he has only got a sister. Your sister can't 
help you much."
It seemed to Catherine that if she were his sister she would disprove this 
axiom. "Is she - is she pleasant?" she asked in a moment.
"I don't know - I believe she's very respectable," said young Townsend. And 
then he looked across to his cousin and began to laugh. "I say, we are 
talking about you," he added.
Morris Townsend paused in his conversation with Mrs. Penniman, and stared, 
with a little smile. Then he got up, as if he were going.
"As far as you are concerned, I can't return the compliment," he said to 
Catherine's companion. "But as regards Miss Sloper, it's another affair."
Catherine thought this little speech wonderfully well turned; but she was 
embarrassed by it, and she also got up. Morris Townsend stood looking at 
her and smiling; he put out his hand for farewell. He was going, without 
having said anything to her; but even on these terms she was glad to have 
seen him.
"I will tell her what you have said - when you go!" said Mrs. Penniman, 
with a little significant laugh.
Catherine blushed, for she felt almost as if they were making sport of her. 
What in the world could this beautiful young man have said? He looked at 
her still, in spite of her blush, but very kindly and respectfully.
"I have had no talk with you," he said, "and that was what I came for. But 
it will be a good reason for coming another time, a little pretext - if I 
am obliged to give one. I am not afraid of what your aunt will say when I 
go."
With this the two young men took their departure; after which Catherine, 
with her blush still lingering, directed a serious and interrogative eye to 
Mrs. Penniman. She was incapable of elaborate artifice, and she resorted to 
no jocular device - to no affectation of the belief that she had been 
maligned - to learn what she desired.
"What did you say you would tell me?" she asked.
Mrs. Penniman came up to her, smiling and nodding a little, looked at her 
all over, and gave a twist to the knot of ribbon in her neck. "It's a great 
secret, my dear child, but he is coming a-courting!"
Catherine was serious still. "Is that what he told you?"
"He didn't say so exactly, but he left me to guess it. I'm a good guesser."
"Do you mean a-courting me?"
"Not me, certainly, miss; though I must say he is a hundred times more 
polite to a person who has no longer extreme youth to recommend her than 
most of the young men. He is thinking of someone else." And Mrs. Penniman 
gave her niece a delicate little kiss. "You must be very gracious to him."
Catherine stared - she was bewildered. "I don't understand you," she said. 
"He doesn't know me."
"Oh yes, he does; more than you think. I have told him all about you."
"Oh, Aunt Penniman!" murmured Catherine, as if this had been a breach of 
trust. "He is a perfect stranger - we don't know him." There was infinite 
modesty in the poor girl's "we."
Aunt Penniman, however, took no account of it; she spoke even with a touch 
of acrimony. "My dear Catherine, you know very well that you admire him."
"Oh, Aunt Penniman!" Catherine could only murmur again. It might very well 
be that she admired him - though this did not seem to her a thing to talk 
about. But that this brilliant stranger - this sudden apparition, who had 
barely heard the sound of her voice - took that sort of interest in her 
that was expressed by the romantic phrase of which Mrs. Penniman had just 
made use - this could only be a figment of the restless brain of Aunt 
Lavinia, whom everyone knew to be a woman of powerful imagination.



Chapter 6

Mrs Penniman even took for granted at times that other people had as much 
imagination as herself; so that when, half an hour later, her brother came 
in, she addressed him quite on this principle.
"He has just been here, Austin; it's such a pity you missed him."
"Whom in the world have I missed?" asked the doctor.
"Mr. Morris Townsend; he has made us such a delightful visit."
"And who in the world is Mr. Morris Townsend?"
"Aunt Penniman means the gentleman - the gentleman whose name I couldn't 
remember," said Catherine.
"The gentleman at Elizabeth's party who was so struck with Catherine," Mrs. 
Penniman added.
"Oh, his name is Morris Townsend, is it? And did he come here to propose to 
you?"
"Oh, Father!" murmured the girl for an answer, turning away to the window, 
where the dusk had deepened to darkness.
"I hope he won't do that without your permission," said Mrs. Penniman, very 
graciously.
"After all, my dear, he seems to have yours," her brother answered.
Lavinia simpered, as if this might not be quite enough, and Catherine, with 
her forehead touching the windowpanes, listened to this exchange of 
epigrams as reservedly as if they had not each been a pinprick in her own 
destiny.
"The next time he comes," the doctor added, "you had better call me. He 
might like to see me."
Morris Townsend came again some five days afterward; but Doctor Sloper was 
not called, as he was absent from home at the time. Catherine was with her 
aunt when the young man's name was brought in, and Mrs. Penniman, effacing 
herself and protesting, made a great point of her niece's going into the 
drawing room alone.
"This time it's for you - for you only," she said. "Before, when he talked 
to me, it was only preliminary - it was to gain my confidence. Literally, 
my dear, I should not have the courage to show myself today."
And this was perfectly true. Mrs. Penniman was not a brave woman, and 
Morris Townsend had struck her as a young man of great force of character, 
and of remarkable powers of satire - a keen, resolute, brilliant nature, 
with which one must exercise a great deal of tact. She said to herself that 
he was "imperious," and she liked the word and the idea. She was not the 
least jealous of her niece, and she had been perfectly happy with Mr. 
Penniman, but in the bottom of her heart she permitted herself the 
observation, "That's the sort of husband I should have had!" He was 
certainly much more imperious - she ended by calling it imperial - than Mr. 
Penniman.
So Catherine saw Mr. Townsend alone, and her aunt did not come in even at 
the end of the visit. The visit was a long one; he sat there, in the front 
parlour, 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 theatre, 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 theatres in 
London and Paris. But the actors were always like the authors - they always 
exaggerated. He liked everything to be natural. Suddenly he stopped, 
looking at Catherine with his smile.
"That's what I like you for; you are so natural. Excuse me," he added, "you 
see I am natural myself."
And before she had time to think whether she excused him or not - which 
afterward, at leisure, she became conscious that she did - he began to talk 
about music, and to say that it was his greatest pleasure in life. He had 
heard all the great singers in Paris and London - Pasta and Rubini and 
Lablache - and when you had done that, you could say that you knew what 
singing was.
"I sing a little myself," he said. "Someday I will show you. Not today, but 
some other time."
And then he got up to go. He had omitted, by accident, to say that he would 
sing to her if she would play to him. He thought of this after he got into 
the street; but he might have spared his compunction, for Catherine had not 
noticed the lapse. She was thinking only that "some other time" had a 
delightful sound; it seemed to spread itself over the future.
This was all the more reason, however, though she was ashamed and 
uncomfortable, why she should tell her father that Mr. Townsend had called 
again. She announced the fact abruptly, almost violently, as soon as the 
doctor came into the house; and having done so - it was her duty - she took 
measures to leave the room. But she could not leave it fast enough; her 
father stopped her just as she reached the door.
"Well, my dear, did he propose to you today?" the doctor asked.
This was just what she had been afraid he would say; and yet she had no 
answer ready. Of course she would have liked to take it as a joke - as her 
father must have meant it; and yet she would have liked also, in denying 
it, to be a little positive, a little sharp, so that he would perhaps not 
ask the question again. She didn't like it - it made her unhappy. But 
Catherine could never be sharp; and for a moment she only stood, with her 
hand on the doorknob, looking at her satiric parent, and giving a little 
laugh.
"Decidedly," said the doctor to himself, "my daughter is not brilliant!"
But he had no sooner made this reflection than Catherine found something; 
she had decided, on the whole, to take the thing as a joke.
"Perhaps he will do it the next time," she exclaimed, with a repetition of 
her laugh; and she quickly got out of the room.
The doctor stood staring; he wondered whether his daughter were serious. 
Catherine went straight to her own room, and by the time she reached it she 
bethought herself that there was something else - something better - she 
might have said. She almost wished, now, that her father would ask his 
question again, so that she might reply, "Oh yes, Mr. Morris Townsend 
proposed to me, and I refused him."
The doctor, however, began to put his questions elsewhere; it naturally 
having occurred to him that he ought to inform himself properly about this 
handsome young man, who had formed the habit of running in and out of his 
house. He addressed himself to the elder of his sisters, Mrs. Almond - not 
going to her for the purpose; there was no such hurry as that; but having 
made a note of the matter for the first opportunity. The doctor was never 
eager, never impatient or nervous; but he made notes of everything, and he 
regularly consulted his notes. Among them the information he obtained from 
Mrs. Almond about Morris Townsend took its place.
"Lavinia has already been to ask me," she said. "Lavinia is most excited; I 
don't understand it. It's not, after all, Lavinia that the young man is 
supposed to have designs upon. She is very peculiar."
"Ah, my dear," the doctor replied, "she has not lived with me these twelve 
years without my finding it out."
"She has got such an artificial mind," said Mrs. Almond, who always enjoyed 
an opportunity to discuss Lavinia's peculiarities with her brother. "She 
didn't want me to tell you that she had asked me about Mr. Townsend; but I 
told her I would. She always wants to conceal everything."
"And yet at moments no one blurts things out with such crudity. She is like 
a revolving lighthouse - pitch darkness alternating with a dazzling 
brilliancy! But what did you tell her?" the doctor asked.
"What I tell you - that I know very little of him."
"Lavinia must have been disappointed at that," said the doctor. "She would 
prefer him to have been guilty of some romantic crime. However, we must 
make the best of people. They tell me our gentleman is the cousin of the 
little boy to whom you are about to entrust the future of your little 
girl."
"Arthur is not a little boy; he is a very old man; you and I will never be 
so old! He is a distant relation of Lavinia's protege. The name is the 
same, but I am given to understand that there are Townsends and Townsends. 
So Arthur's mother tells me; she talked about 'branches' - younger 
branches, elder branches, inferior branches - as if it were a royal house. 
Arthur, it appears, is of the reigning line, but poor Lavinia's young man 
is not. Beyond this, Arthur's mother knows very little about him; she has 
only a vague story that he has been 'wild.' But I know his sister a little, 
and she is a very nice woman. Her name is Mrs. Montgomery; she is a widow, 
with a little property and five children. She lives in the Second Avenue."
"What does Mrs. Montgomery say about him?"
"That he has talents by which he might distinguish himself."
"Only he is lazy, eh?"
"She doesn't say so."
"That's family pride," said the doctor. "What is his profession?"
"He hasn't got any; he is looking for something. I believe he was once in 
the navy."
"Once? What is his age?"
"I suppose he is upward of thirty. He must have gone into the navy very 
young. I think Arthur told me that he inherited a small property - which 
was perhaps the cause of his leaving the navy - and that he spent it all in 
a few years. He travelled all over the world, lived abroad, amused himself. 
I believe it was a kind of system, a theory he had. He has lately come back 
to America with the intention, as he tells Arthur, of beginning life in 
earnest."
"Is he in earnest about Catherine, then?"
"I don't see why you should be incredulous," said Mrs. Almond. "It seems to 
me that you have never done Catherine justice. You must remember that she 
has the prospect of thirty thousand a year."
The doctor looked at his sister a moment, and then, with lightest touch of 
bitterness, "You at least appreciate her," he said.
Mrs. Almond blushed.
"I don't mean that is her only merit; I simply mean that it is a great one. 
A great many young men think so; and you appear to me never to have been 
properly aware of that. You have always had a little way of alluding to her 
as an unmarriageable girl."
"My allusions are as kind as yours, Elizabeth," said the doctor, frankly. 
"How many suitors has Catherine had, with all her expectations - how much 
attention has she ever received? Catherine is not unmarriageable, but she 
is absolutely unattractive. What other reason is there for Lavinia being so 
charmed with the idea that there is a lover in the house? There has never 
been one before, and Lavinia, with her sensitive, sympathetic nature, is 
not used to the idea. It affects her imagination. I must do the young men 
of New York the justice to say that they strike me as very disinterested. 
They prefer pretty girls - lively girls - girls like your own. Catherine is 
neither pretty nor lively."
"Catherine does very well; she has a style of her own - which is more than 
my poor Marian has, who has no style at all," said Mrs. Almond. "The reason 
Catherine has received so little attention, is that she seems to all the 
young men to be older than themselves. She is so large, and she dresses so 
richly. They are rather afraid of her, I think; she looks as if she had 
been married already, and you know they don't like married women. And if 
our young men appear disinterested," the doctor's wiser sister went on, "it 
is because they marry, as a general thing, so young - before twenty-five, 
at the age of innocence and sincerity - before the age of calculation. If 
they only waited a little, Catherine would fare better."
"As a calculation? Thank you very much," said the doctor.
"Wait till some intelligent man of forty comes along, and he will be 
delighted with Catherine," Mrs. Almond continued.
"Mr. Townsend is not old enough, then? His motives may be pure."
"It is very possible that his motives are pure; I should be very sorry to 
take the contrary for granted. Lavinia is sure of it; and, as he is a very 
prepossessing youth, you might give him the benefit of the doubt."
Doctor Sloper reflected a moment.
"What are his present means of subsistence?"
"I have no idea. He lives, as I say, with his sister."
"A widow, with five children? Do you mean he lives upon her?"
Mrs. Almond got up, and with a certain impatience, "Had you not better ask 
Mrs. Montgomery herself?" she inquired.
"Perhaps I may come to that," said the doctor. "Did you say the Second 
Avenue?" He made a note of the Second Avenue.



Chapter 7

He was, however, by no means so much in earnest as this might seem to 
indicate; and, indeed, he was more than anything else amused with the whole 
situation. He was not in the least in a state of tension or of vigilance 
with regard to Catherine's prospects; he was even on his guard against the 
ridicule that might attach itself to the spectacle of a house thrown into 
agitation by its daughter and heiress receiving attentions unprecedented in 
its annals. More than this, he went so far as to promise himself some 
entertainment from the little drama - if drama it was - of which Mrs. 
Penniman desired to represent the ingenious Mr. Townsend as the hero. He 
had no intention, as yet, of regulating the denouement. He was perfectly 
willing, as Elizabeth had suggested, to give the young man the benefit of 
every doubt. There was no great danger in it; for Catherine, at the age of 
twenty-two, was, after all, a rather mature blossom, such as could be 
plucked from the stem only by a vigorous jerk. The fact that Morris 
Townsend was poor, was not of necessity against him; the doctor had never 
made up his mind that his daughter should marry a rich man. The fortune she 
would inherit struck him as a very sufficient provision for two reasonable 
persons, and if a penniless swain who could give a good account of himself 
should enter the lists, he should be judged quite upon his personal merits. 
There were other things besides. The doctor thought it very vulgar to be 
precipitate in accusing people of mercenary motives, inasmuch as his door 
had as yet not been in the least besieged by fortune hunters; and, lastly, 
he was very curious to see whether Catherine might really be loved for her 
moral worth. He smiled as he reflected that poor Mr. Townsend had been only 
twice to the house, and he said to Mrs. Penniman that the next time he 
should come she must ask him to dinner.
He came very soon again, and Mrs. Penniman had of course great pleasure in 
executing this mission. Morris Townsend accepted her invitation with equal 
good grace, and the dinner took place a few days later. The doctor had said 
to himself, justly enough, that they must not have the young man alone; 
this would partake too much of the nature of encouragement. So two or three 
other persons were invited; but Morris Townsend, though he was by no means 
the ostensible, was the real occasion of the feast. There is every reason 
to suppose that he desired to make a good impression; and if he fell short 
of this result, it was not for want of a good deal of intelligent effort. 
The doctor talked to him very little during dinner; but he observed him 
attentively, and after the ladies had gone out he pushed him the wine and 
asked him several questions. Morris was not a young man who needed to be 
pressed, and he found quite enough encouragement in the superior quality of 
the claret. The doctor's wine was admirable, and it may be communicated to 
the reader that while he sipped it Morris reflected that a cellarful of 
good liquor - there was evidently a cellarful here - would be a most 
attractive idiosyncrasy in a father-in-law. The doctor was struck with his 
appreciative guest; he saw that he was not a commonplace young man. "He has 
ability," said Catherine's father, "decided ability; he has a very good 
head if he chooses to use it. And he is uncommonly well turned out; quite 
the sort of figure that pleases the ladies; but I don't think I like him." 
The doctor, however, kept his reflections to himself, and talked to his 
visitor about foreign lands, concerning which Morris offered him more 
information than he was ready, as he mentally phrased it, to swallow. 
Doctor Sloper had travelled but little, and he took the liberty of not 
believing everything that his talkative guest narrated. He prided himself 
on being something of a physiognomist; and while the young man, chatting 
with easy assurance, puffed his cigar and filled his glass again, the 
doctor sat with his eyes quietly fixed on his bright, expressive face. "He 
has the assurance of the devil himself!" said Morris's host. "I don't think 
I ever saw such assurance. And his powers of invention are most remarkable. 
He is very knowing; they were not so knowing as that in my time. And a good 
head, did I say? I should think so - after a bottle of Madeira, and a 
bottle and a half of claret!"
After dinner Morris Townsend went and stood before Catherine, who was 
standing before the fire in her red satin gown.
"He doesn't like me - he doesn't like me at all," said the young man.
"Who doesn't like you?" asked Catherine.
"Your father; extraordinary man!"
"I don't see how you know," said Catherine, blushing.
"I feel; I am very quick to feel."
"Perhaps you are mistaken."
"Ah, well, you ask him, and you will see."
"I would rather not ask him, if there is any danger of his saying what you 
think."
Morris looked at her with an air of mock melancholy.
"It wouldn't give you any pleasure to contradict him?"
"I never contradict him," said Catherine.
"Will you hear me abused without opening your lips in my defence?"
"My father won't abuse you. He doesn't know you enough."
Morris Townsend gave a loud laugh, and Catherine began to blush again.
"I shall never mention you," she said, to take refuge from her confusion.
"That is very well, but it is not quite what I should have liked you to 
say. I should have liked you to say, 'If my father doesn't think well of 
you, what does it matter?' "
"Ah, but it would matter; I couldn't say that!" the girl exclaimed.
He looked at her for a moment, smiling a little; and the doctor, if he had 
been watching him just then, would have seen a gleam of fine impatience in 
the sociable softness of his eye. But there was no impatience in his 
rejoinder - none, at least, save what was expressed in a little appealing 
sigh. "Ah, well, then I must not give up the hope of bringing him round."
He expressed it more frankly to Mrs. Penniman later in the evening. But 
before that he sang two or three songs at Catherine's timid request; not 
that he flattered himself that this would help to bring her father round. 
He had a sweet light tenor voice, and, when he had finished, everyone made 
some exclamation - everyone, that is, save Catherine, who remained 
intensely silent. Mrs. Penniman declared that his manner of singing was 
"most artistic," and Doctor Sloper said it was "very taking - very taking, 
indeed," speaking loudly and distinctly, but with a certain dryness.
"He doesn't like me - he doesn't like me at all," said Morris Townsend, 
addressing the aunt in the same manner as he had done the niece. "He thinks 
I am all wrong."
Unlike her niece, Mrs. Penniman asked for no explanation. She only smiled 
very sweetly, as if she understood everything; and, unlike Catherine too, 
she made no attempt to contradict him. "Pray, what does it matter?" she 
murmured, softly.
"Ah, you say the right thing!" said Morris, greatly to the gratification of 
Mrs. Penniman, who prided herself on always saying the right thing.
The doctor, the next time he saw his sister Elizabeth, let her know that he 
had made the acquaintance of Lavinia's protege.
"Physically," he said, "he's uncommonly well set up. As an anatomist, it is 
really a pleasure to me to see such a beautiful structure; although, if 
people were all like him, I suppose there would be very little need for 
doctors."
"Don't you see anything in people but their bones?" Mrs. Almond rejoined. 
"What do you think of him as a father?"
"As a father? Thank heaven, I am not his father!"
"No; but you are Catherine's. Lavinia tells me she is in love."
"She must get over it. He is not a gentleman."
"Ah, take care! Remember that he is a branch of the Townsends."
"He is not what I call a gentleman; he has not the soul of one. He is 
extremely insinuating; but it's a vulgar nature. I saw through it in a 
minute. He is altogether too familiar - I hate familiarity. He is a 
plausible coxcomb."
"Ah, well," said Mrs. Almond, "if you make up your mind so easily, it's a 
great advantage."
"I don't make up my mind easily. What I tell you is the result of thirty 
years of observation; and in order to be able to form that judgement in a 
single evening, I have had to spend a lifetime in study. "
"Very possibly you are right. But the thing is for Catherine to see it."
"I will present her with a pair of spectacles!" said the doctor.



Chapter 8

If it were true that she was in love, she was certainly very quiet about 
it; but the doctor was of course prepared to admit that her quietness might 
mean volumes. She had told Morris Townsend that she would not mention him 
to her father, and she saw no reason to retract this vow of discretion. It 
was no more than decently civil, of course, that, after having dined in 
Washington Square, Morris should call there again; and it was no more than 
natural that, having been kindly received on this occasion, he should 
continue to present himself. He had had plenty of leisure on his hands; and 
thirty years ago, in New York, a young man of leisure had reason to be 
thankful for aids to self-oblivion. Catherine said nothing to her father 
about these visits, though they had rapidly become the most important, the 
most absorbing thing in her life. The girl was happy. She knew not as yet 
what would come of it; but the present had suddenly grown rich and solemn. 
If she had been told she was in love, she would have been a good deal 
surprised; for she had an idea that love was an eager and exacting passion, 
and her own heart was filled in these days with the impulse of self-
effacement and sacrifice. Whenever Morris Townsend had left the house, her 
imagination projected itself, with all its strength, into the idea of his 
soon coming back; but if she had been told at such a moment that he would 
not return for a year, or even that he would never return, she would not 
have complained nor rebelled, but would have humbly accepted the decree, 
and sought for consolation in thinking over the times she had already seen 
him, the words he had spoken, the sound of his voice, of his tread, the 
expression of his face. Love demands certain things as a right; but 
Catherine had no sense of her rights; she had only a consciousness of 
immense and unexpected favours. Her very gratitude for these things had 
hushed itself; for it seemed to her that there would be something of 
impudence in making a festival of her secret. Her father suspected Morris 
Townsend's visits, and noted her reserve. She seemed to beg pardon for it; 
she looked at him constantly in silence, as if she meant to say that she 
said nothing because she was afraid of irritating him. But the poor girl's 
dumb eloquence irritated him more than anything else would have done, and 
he caught himself murmuring more than once that it was a grievous pity his 
only child was a simpleton. His murmurs, however, were inaudible; and for 
awhile he said nothing to anyone. He would have liked to know exactly how 
often young Townsend came; but he had determined to ask no questions of the 
girl herself - to say nothing more to her that would show that he watched 
her. The doctor had a great idea of being largely just: He wished to leave 
his daughter her liberty, and interfere only when the danger should be 
proved. It was not in his manner to obtain information by indirect methods, 
and it never even occurred to him to question the servants. As for Lavinia, 
he hated to talk to her about the matter; she annoyed him with her mock 
romanticism. But he had to come to this. Mrs. Penniman's convictions as 
regards the relations of her niece and the clever young visitor, who saved 
appearances by coming ostensibly for both the ladies - Mrs. Penniman's 
convictions had passed into a riper and richer phase. There was to be no 
crudity in Mrs. Penniman's treatment of the situation; she had become as 
uncommunicative as Catherine herself. She was tasting of the sweets of 
concealment; she had taken up the line of mystery. "She would be enchanted 
to be able to prove to herself that she is persecuted," said the doctor; 
and when at last he questioned her, he was sure she would contrive to 
extract from his words a pretext for this belief.
"Be so good as to let me know what is going on in the house," he said to 
her, in a tone which, under the circumstances, he himself deemed genial.
"Going on, Austin?" Mrs. Penniman exclaimed. "Why, I am sure I don't know. 
I believe that last night the old grey cat had kittens."
"At her age?" said the doctor. "The idea is startling - almost shocking. Be 
so good as to see that they are all drowned. But what else has happened?"
"Ah, the dear little kittens!" cried Mrs. Penniman. "I wouldn't have them 
drowned for the world!"
Her brother puffed his cigar a few moments in silence. "Your sympathy with 
kittens, Lavinia," he presently resumed, "arises from a feline element in 
your own character."
"Cats are very graceful, and very clean," said Mrs. Penniman,
"And very stealthy. You are the embodiment both of grace and of neatness; 
but you are wanting in frankness."
"You certainly are not, dear brother."
"I don't pretend to be graceful, though I try to be neat. Why haven't you 
let me know that Mr. Morris Townsend is coming to the house four times a 
week?"
Mrs. Penniman lifted her eyebrows. "Four times a week!"
"Three times, then, or five times, if you prefer it. I am away all day, and 
I see nothing. But when such things happen, you should let me know."
Mrs. Penniman, with her eyebrows still raised, reflected intently. "Dear 
Austin," she said at last, "I am incapable of betraying a confidence. I 
would rather suffer anything."
"Never fear; you shall not suffer. To whose confidence is it you allude? 
Has Catherine made you take a vow of eternal secrecy?"
"By no means. Catherine has not told me as much as she might. She has not 
been very trustful."
"It is the young man, then, who has made you his confidant? Allow me to say 
that it is extremely indiscreet of you to form secret alliances with young 
men; you don't know where they may lead you."
"I don't know what you mean by an alliance," said Mrs. Penniman. "I take a 
great interest in Mr. Townsend; I won't conceal that. But that's all."
"Under the circumstances, that is quite enough. What is the source of your 
interest in Mr. Townsend?"
"Why," said Mrs. Penniman, musing, and then breaking into her smile, "that 
he is so interesting!"
The doctor felt that he had need of his patience. "And what makes him 
interesting? His good looks?"
"His misfortunes, Austin."
"Ah, he has had misfortunes? That, of course, is always interesting. Are 
you at liberty to mention a few of Mr. Townsend's?"
"I don't know that he would like it," said Mrs. Penniman. "He has told me a 
great deal about himself - he has told me, in fact, his whole history. But 
I don't think I ought to repeat those things. He would tell them to you, I 
am sure, if he thought you would listen to him kindly. With kindness you 
may do anything with him."
The doctor gave a laugh. "I shall request him very kindly, then, to leave 
Catherine alone."
"Ah!" said Mrs. Penniman, shaking her forefinger at her brother, with her 
little finger turned out, "Catherine has probably said something to him 
kinder than that!"
"Said that she loved him? Do you mean that?"
Mrs. Penniman fixed her eyes on the floor. "As I tell you, Austin, she 
doesn't confide in me."
"You have an opinion, I suppose, all the same. It is that I ask you for; 
though I don't conceal from you that I shall not regard it as conclusive."
Mrs. Penniman's gaze continued to rest on the carpet; but at last she 
lifted it, and then her brother thought it very expressive. "I think 
Catherine is very happy; that is all I can say."
"Townsend is trying to marry her - is that what you mean?"
"He is greatly interested in her."
"He finds her such an attractive girl?"
"Catherine has a lovely nature, Austin," said Mrs. Penniman, "and Mr. 
Townsend has had the intelligence to discover that."
"With a little help from you, I suppose. My dear Lavinia," cried the 
doctor, "you are an admirable aunt!"
"So Mr. Townsend says," observed Lavinia, smiling.
"Do you think he is sincere?" asked her brother.
"In saying that?"
"No; that's of course. But in his admiration for Catherine?"
"Deeply sincere. He has said to me the most appreciative, the most charming 
things about her. He would say them to you, if he were sure you would 
listen to him - gently."
"I doubt whether I can undertake it. He appears to require a great deal of 
gentleness."
"He is a sympathetic, sensitive nature," said Mrs. Penniman.
Her brother puffed his cigar again in silence. "These delicate qualities 
have survived his vicissitudes, eh? All this while you haven't told me 
about his misfortunes."
"It is a long story," said Mrs. Penniman, "and I regard it as a sacred 
trust. But I suppose there is no objection to my saying that he has been 
wild - he frankly confesses that. But he has paid for it."
"That's what has impoverished him, eh?"
"I don't mean simply in money. He is very much alone in the world."
"Do you mean that he has behaved so badly that his friends have given him 
up?"
"He has had false friends, who have deceived and betrayed him."
"He seems to have some good ones too. He has a devoted sister, and half a 
dozen nephews and nieces."
Mrs. Penniman was silent a minute. "The nephews and nieces are children, 
and the sister is not a very attractive person."
"I hope he doesn't abuse her to you," said the doctor, "for I am told he 
lives upon her."
"Lives upon her?"
"Lives with her, and does nothing for himself; it is about the same thing."
"He is looking for a position most earnestly," said Mrs. Penniman. "He 
hopes every day to find one."
"Precisely. He is looking for it here - over there in the front parlour. 
The position of husband of a weak-minded woman with a large fortune would 
suit him to perfection!"
Mrs. Penniman was truly amiable, but she now gave signs of temper. She rose 
with much animation, and stood for a moment looking at her brother. "My 
dear Austin," she remarked, "if you regard Catherine as a weak-minded woman 
you are particularly mistaken!" And with this she moved majestically away.



Chapter 9

It was a regular custom with the family in Washington Square to go and 
spend Sunday evening at Mrs. Almond's. On the Sunday after the conversation 
I have just narrated this custom was not intermitted; and on this occasion, 
toward the middle of the evening, Doctor Sloper found reason to withdraw to 
the library with his brother-in-law, to talk over a matter of business. He 
was absent some twenty minutes, and when he came back into the circle, 
which was enlivened by the presence of several friends of the family, he 
saw that Morris Townsend had come in, and had lost as little time as 
possible in seating himself on a small sofa beside Catherine. In the large 
room, where several different groups had been formed, and the hum of voices 
and of laughter was loud, these two young persons might confabulate, as the 
doctor phrased it to himself, without attracting attention. He saw in a 
moment, however, that his daughter was painfully conscious of his own 
observation. She sat motionless, with her eyes bent down, staring at her 
open fan, deeply flushed, shrinking together as if to minimise 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 unsympathising eye, there was nothing but discomfort for 
her in the accident of seeming to challenge him. The doctor felt, indeed, 
so sorry for her that he turned away, to spare her the sense of being 
watched; and he was so intelligent a man that, in his thoughts, he rendered 
a sort of poetic justice to her
"It must be deucedly pleasant for a plain, inanimate girl like that to have 
a beautiful young fellow come and sit down beside her, and whisper to her 
that he is her slave - if that is what this one whispers. No wonder she 
likes it, and that she thinks me a cruel tyrant, which of course she does, 
though she is afraid - she hasn't the animation necessary - to admit it to 
herself. Poor old Catherine!" mused the doctor, "I verily believe she is 
capable of defending me when Townsend abuses me!"
And the force of this reflection, for the moment, was such in making him 
feel the natural opposition between his point of view and that of an 
infatuated child, that he said to himself that he was perhaps after all 
taking things too hard, and crying out before he was hurt. He must not 
condemn Morris Townsend unheard. He had a great aversion to taking things 
too hard; he thought that half the discomfort and many of the 
disappointments of life come from it; and for an instant he asked himself 
whether, possibly, he did not appear ridiculous to this intelligent young 
man, whose private perception of incongruities he suspected of being keen. 
At the end of a quarter of an hour Catherine had got rid of him, and 
Townsend was now standing before the fireplace in conversation with Mrs. 
Almond.
"We will try him again," said the doctor. And he crossed the room and 
joined his sister and her companion, making her a sign that she should 
leave the young man to him. She presently did so, while Morris looked at 
him, smiling, without a sign of evasiveness in his affable eye.
"He's amazingly conceited!" thought the doctor; and then he said, aloud, "I 
am told you are looking out for a position."
"Oh, a position is more than I should presume to call it," Morris Townsend 
answered. "That sounds so fine. I should like some quiet work - something 
to turn an honest penny."
"What sort of thing should you prefer?"
"Do you mean what am I fit for? Very little, I am afraid. I have nothing 
but my good right arm, as they say in the melodramas."
"You are too modest," said the doctor. "In addition to your good right arm 
you have your subtle brain. I know nothing of you but what I see; but I see 
by your physiognomy that you are extremely intelligent."
"Ah," Townsend murmured, "I don't know what to answer when you say that. 
You advise me, then, not to despair?"
And he looked at his interlocutor as if the question might have a double 
meaning. The doctor caught the look and weighed it a moment before he 
replied. "I should be very sorry to admit that a robust and well-disposed 
young man need ever despair. If he doesn't succeed in one thing, he can try 
another. Only, I should add, he should choose his line with discretion."
"Ah, yes, with discretion," Morris Townsend repeated, sympathetically. 
"Well, I have been indiscreet, formerly; but I think I have got over it. I 
am very steady now." And he stood a moment, looking down at his remarkably 
neat shoes. Then at last, "Were you kindly intending to propose something 
for my advantage?" he inquired, looking up and smiling. 
"D-n his impudence! " the doctor exclaimed, privately. But in a moment he 
reflected that he himself had, after all, touched first upon this delicate 
point, and that his words might have been construed as an offer of 
assistance. "I have no particular proposal to make," he presently said, 
"but it occurred to me to let you know that I have you in my mind. 
Sometimes one hears of opportunities. For instance, should you object to 
leaving New York - to going to a distance?"
"I am afraid I shouldn't be able to manage that. I must seek my fortune 
here or nowhere. You see," added Morris Townsend, "I have ties - I have 
responsibilities here. I have a sister, a widow, from whom I have been 
separated for a long time, and to whom I am almost everything. I shouldn't 
like to say to her that I must leave her. She rather depends upon me, you 
see."
"Ah, that's very proper; family feeling is very proper," said Doctor 
Sloper. "I often think there is not enough of it in our city. I think I 
have heard of your sister."
"It is possible, but I rather doubt it; she lives so very quietly."
"As quietly, you mean," the doctor went on, with a short laugh, "as a lady 
may do who has several young children."
"Ah, my little nephews and nieces - that's the very point! I am helping to 
bring them up," said Morris Townsend. "I am a kind of amateur tutor; I give 
them lessons."
"That's very proper, as I say; but it is hardly a career."
"It won't make my fortune," the young man confessed.
"You must not be too much bent on a fortune," said the doctor. "But I 
assure you I will keep you in mind; I won't lose sight of you."
"If my situation becomes desperate I shall perhaps take the liberty of 
reminding you," Morris rejoined, raising his voice a little, with a 
brighter smile, as his interlocutor turned away.
Before he left the house the doctor had a few words with Mrs. Almond.
"I should like to see his sister," he said. "What do you call her - Mrs. 
Montgomery? I should like to have a little talk with her."
"I will try and manage it," Mrs. Almond responded. "I will take the first 
opportunity of inviting her, and you shall come and meet her; unless, 
indeed," Mrs. Almond added, "She first takes it into her head to be sick 
and to send for you."
"Ah no, not that; she must have trouble enough without that. But it would 
have its advantages, for then I should see the children. I should like very 
much to see the children."
"You are very thorough. Do you want to catechise them about their uncle? "
"Precisely. Their uncle tells me he has charge of their education, that he 
saves their mother the expense of school bills. I should like to ask them a 
few questions in the commoner branches."
"He certainly has not the cut of a schoolmaster," Mrs. Almond said to 
herself a short time afterward, as she saw Morris Townsend in a corner 
bending over her niece, who was seated.
And there was, indeed, nothing in the young man's discourse at this moment 
that savoured of the pedagogue.
"Will you meet me somewhere tomorrow or next day?" he said, in a low tone, 
to Catherine.
"Meet you?" she asked, lifting her frightened eyes.
"I have something particular to say to you - very particular."
"Can't you come to the house? Can't you say it there?"
Townsend shook his head gloomily. "I can't enter your doors again."
"Oh, Mr. Townsend!" murmured Catherine. She trembled as she wondered what 
had happened - whether her father had forbidden it.
"I can't, in self-respect," said the young man. "Your father has insulted 
me."
"Insulted you!"
"He has taunted me with my poverty."
"Oh, you are mistaken - you misunderstood him!" Catherine spoke with 
energy, getting up from her chair.
"Perhaps I am too proud - too sensitive. But would you have me otherwise?" 
he asked, tenderly.
"Where my father is concerned, you must not be sure. He is full of 
goodness," said Catherine.
"He laughed at me for having no position. I took it quietly; but only 
because he belongs to you."
"I don't know," said Catherine, "I don't know what he thinks. I am sure he 
means to be kind. You must not be too proud."
"I will be proud only of you," Morris answered. "Will you meet me in the 
Square in the afternoon?"
A great blush on Catherine's part had been the answer to the declaration I 
have just quoted. She turned away, heedless of his question.
"Will you meet me?" he repeated. "It is very quiet there - no one need see 
us - toward dusk."
"It is you who are unkind, it is you who laugh, when you say such things as 
that."
"My dear girl!" the young man murmured.
"You know how little there is in me to be proud of. I am ugly and stupid. "
Morris greeted this remark with an ardent murmur, in which she recognised 
nothing articulate but an assurance that she was his own dearest.
But she went on. "I am not even - I am not even-" And she paused a moment.
"You are not what?"
"I am not even brave."
"Ah, then, if you are afraid, what shall we do?"
She hesitated awhile; then at last, "You must come to the house," she said. 
"I am not afraid of that."
"I would rather it were in the Square," the young man urged. "You know how 
empty it is, often. No one will see us."
"I don't care who sees us. But leave me now."
He left her resignedly; he had got what he wanted. Fortunately he was 
ignorant that half an hour later, going home with her father, and feeling 
him near, the poor girl, in spite of her sudden declaration of courage, 
began to tremble again. Her father said nothing; but she had an idea his 
eyes were fixed upon her in the darkness. Mrs. Penniman also was silent; 
Morris Townsend had told her that her niece preferred, unromantically, an 
interview in a chintz-covered parlour to a sentimental tryst beside a 
fountain sheeted with dead leaves, and she was lost in wonderment at the 
oddity - almost the perversity - of the choice.



Chapter 10

Catherine received the young man the next day on the ground she had chosen 
- amidst the chaste upholstery of a New York drawing room furnished in the 
fashion of fifty years ago. Morris had swallowed his pride, and made the 
effort necessary to cross the threshold of her too derisive parent - an act 
of magnanimity which could not fail to render him doubly interesting.
"We must settle something - we must take a line," he declared, passing his 
hand through his hair and giving a glance at the long, narrow mirror which 
adorned the space between the two windows, and which had at its base a 
little gilded bracket covered by a thin slab of white marble, supporting in 
its turn a backgammon board folded together in the shape of two volumes - 
two shining folios inscribed, in greenish-gilt letters, History of England. 
If Morris had been pleased to describe the master of the house as a 
heartless scoffer, it is because he thought him too much on his guard, and 
this was the easiest way to express his own dissatisfaction - a 
dissatisfaction which he had made a point of concealing from the doctor. It 
will probably seem to the reader, however, that the doctor's vigilance was 
by no means excessive, and that these two young people had an open field. 
Their intimacy was now considerable, and it may appear that, for a 
shrinking and retiring person, our heroine had been liberal of her favours. 
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 favours the brave, and even if he had 
forgotten it, Mrs. Penniman would have remembered it for him. Mrs. Penniman 
delighted of all things in a drama, and she flattered herself that a drama 
would now be enacted. Combining as she did the zeal of the prompter with 
the impatience of the spectator, she had long since done her utmost to pull 
up the curtain. She, too, expected to figure in the performance - to be the 
confidante, the chorus, to speak the epilogue. It may even be said that 
there were times when she lost sight altogether of the modest heroine of 
the play in the contemplation of certain great scenes which would naturally 
occur between the hero and herself. 
What Morris had told Catherine at last was simply that he loved her, or 
rather adored her. Virtually, he had made known as much already - his 
visits had been a series of eloquent intimations of it. But now he had 
affirmed it in lover's vows, and, as a memorable sign of it, he bad passed 
his arm round the girl's waist and taken a kiss. This happy certitude had 
come sooner than Catherine expected, and she had regarded it, very 
naturally, as a priceless treasure. It may even be doubted whether she had 
ever definitely expected to possess it; she had not been waiting for it, 
and she had never said to herself that at a given moment it must come. As I 
have tried to explain, she was not eager and exacting; she took what was 
given her from day to day; and if the delightful custom of her lover's 
visits, which yielded her a happiness in which confidence and timidity were 
strangely blended, had suddenly come to an end, she would not only not have 
spoken of herself as one of the forsaken, but she would not have thought of 
herself as one of the disappointed. After Morris had kissed her, the last 
time he was with her, as a ripe assurance of his devotion, she begged him 
to go away, to leave her alone, to let her think. Morris went away, taking 
another kiss first. But Catherine's meditations had lacked a certain 
coherence. She felt his kisses on her lips and on her cheeks for a long 
time afterward; the sensation was rather an obstacle than an aid to 
reflection. She would have liked to see her situation all clearly before 
her, to make up her mind what she should do if, as she feared, her father 
should tell her that he disapproved of Morris Townsend. But all that she 
could see with any vividness was that it was terribly strange that anyone 
should disapprove of him; that there must in that case be some mistake, 
some mystery, which in a little while would be set at rest. She put off 
deciding and choosing; before the vision of a conflict with her father she 
dropped her eyes and sat motionless, holding her breath and waiting. It 
made her heart beat; it was intensely painful. When Morris kissed her and 
said these things - that also made her heart beat; but this was worse, and 
it frightened her. Nevertheless, today, when the young man spoke of 
settling something, taking a line, she felt that it was the truth, and she 
answered very simply and without hesitating. 
"We must do our duty," she said. "We must speak to my father. I will do it 
tonight; you must do it tomorrow." 
"It is very good of you to do it first," Morris answered. "The young man - 
the happy lover - generally does that. But just as you please." 
It pleased Catherine to think that she should be brave for his sake, and in 
her satisfaction she even gave a little smile. "Women have more tact," she 
said. "They ought to do it first. They are more conciliating; they can 
persuade better." 
"You will need all your powers of persuasion. But, after all," Morris 
added, "you are irresistible." 
"Please don't speak that way - and promise me this: Tomorrow, when you talk 
with Father, you will be very gentle and respectful." 
"As much so as possible," Morris promised. "It won't be much use, but I 
shall try. I certainly would rather have you easily than have to fight for 
you." 
"Don't talk about fighting; we shall not fight." 
"Ah, we must be prepared," Morris rejoined, "you especially, because for 
you it must come hardest. Do you know the first thing your father will say 
to you?" 
"No, Morris; please tell me." 
"He will tell you I am mercenary." 
"Mercenary!" 
"It's a big word, but it means a low thing. It means that I am after your 
money." 
"Oh!" murmured Catherine, softly. 
The exclamation was so deprecating and touching that Morris indulged in 
another little demonstration of affection. "But he will be sure to say it," 
he added.
"It will be easy to be prepared for that," Catherine said. "I shall simply 
say that he is mistaken - that other men may be that way, but that you are 
not." 
"You must make a great point of that, for it will be his own great point." 
Catherine looked at her lover a minute, and then she said, "I shall 
persuade him. But I am glad we shall be rich," she added. 
Morris turned away, looking into the crown of his hat. "No, it's a 
misfortune," he said at last. "It is from that our difficulty will come." 
"Well, if it is the worst misfortune, we are not so unhappy. Many people 
would not think it so bad. I will persuade him, and after that we shall be 
very glad we have money." 
Morris Townsend listened to this robust logic in silence. "I will leave my 
defence to you; it's a charge that a man has to stoop to defend himself 
from." 
Catherine on her side was silent for awhile; she was looking at him while 
he looked, with a good deal of fixedness, out of the window. "Morris," she 
said, abruptly, "are you very sure you love me?" 
He turned round, and in a moment he was bending over her. "My own dearest, 
can you doubt it?" 
"I have only known it five days," she said, "but now it seems to me as if I 
could never do without it." 
"You will never be called upon to try." And he gave a little tender, 
reassuring laugh. Then, in a moment, he added, "There is something you must 
tell me, too." She had closed her eyes after the last words she uttered, 
and kept them closed; and at this she nodded her head, without opening 
them. "You must tell me," he went on, "that if your father is dead against 
me, if he absolutely forbids our marriage, you will still be faithful." 
Catherine opened her eyes, gazing at him, and she could give no better 
promise than what he read there. 
"You will cleave to me?" said Morris. "You know you are your own mistress - 
you are of age." 
"Ah, Morris!" she murmured, for all answer; or rather not for all, for she 
put her hand into his own. He kept it awhile, and presently he kissed her 
again. This is all that need be recorded of their conversation; but Mrs. 
Penniman, if she had been present, would probably have admitted that it was 
as well it had not taken place beside the fountain in Washington Square. 


Chapter 11

Catherine listened for her father when he came in that evening, and she 
heard him go to his study. She sat quiet, though her heart was beating 
fast, for nearly half an hour; then she went and knocked at his door - a 
ceremony without which she never crossed the threshold of this apartment. 
On entering it now, she found him in his chair beside the fire, 
entertaining himself with a cigar and the evening paper. 
"I have something to say to you," she began very gently; and she sat down 
in the first place that offered. 
"I shall be very happy to hear it, my dear," said her father. He waited - 
waited, looking at her - while she stared, in a long silence, at the fire. 
He was curious and impatient, for he was sure she was going to speak of 
Morris Townsend; but he let her take her own time, for he was determined to 
be very mild. 
"I am engaged to be married!" Catherine announced at last, still staring at 
the fire. 
The doctor was startled; the accomplished fact was more than he had 
expected; but he betrayed no surprise. "You do right to tell me," he simply 
said. "And who is the happy mortal whom you have honoured with your 
choice?" 
"Mr. Morns Townsend." And as she pronounced her lover's name Catherine 
looked at him. What she saw was her father's still grey eye and his clear-
cut, definite smile. She contemplated these objects for a moment, and then 
she looked back at the fire; it was much warmer. 
"When was this arrangement made" the doctor asked. 
"This afternoon - two hours ago." 
"Was Mr. Townsend here?" 
"Yes, Father; in the front parlour." She was very glad that she was not 
obliged to tell him that the ceremony of their betrothal had taken place 
out there under the bare ailanthus trees. 
"Is it serious?" said the doctor. 
"Very serious, father." 
Her father was silent a moment. "Mr. Townsend ought to have told me." 
"He means to tell you tomorrow." 
"After I know all about it from you? He ought to have told me before. Does 
he think I didn't care, because I left you so much liberty"
"Oh no," said Catherine, "he knew you would care. And we have been so much 
obliged to you for - for the liberty." 
The doctor gave a short laugh. "You might have made a better use of it, 
Catherine." 
"Please don't say that, Father!" the girl urged, softly, fixing her dull 
and gentle eyes upon him. 
He puffed his cigar awhile, meditatively. "You have gone very fast," he 
said, at last. 
"Yes," Catherine answered, simply, "I think we have." 
Her father glanced at her an instant, removing his eyes from the fire. "I 
don't wonder Mr. Townsend likes you; you are so simple and so good." 
"I don't know why it is; but he does like me. I am sure of that." 
"And are you very fond of Mr. Townsend?" 
"I like him very much, of course, or I shouldn't consent to marry him." 
"But you have known him a very short time, my dear." 
"Oh," said Catherine, with some eagerness, "it doesn't take long to like a 
person when once you begin." 
"You must have begun very quickly. Was it the first time you saw him - that 
night at your aunt's party?"
"I don't know, Father," the girl answered. "I can't tell you about that." 
"Of course; that's your own affair. You will have observed that I have 
acted on that principle. I have not interfered; I have left you your 
liberty; I have remembered that you are no longer a little girl - that you 
have arrived at years of discretion." 
"I feel very old - and very wise," said Catherine, smiling faintly. 
"I am afraid that before long you will feel older and wiser yet. I don't 
like your engagement." 
"Ah!" Catherine exclaimed, softly, getting up from her chair. 
"No, my dear. I am sorry to give you pain; but I don't like it. You should 
have consulted me before you settled it. I have been too easy with you, and 
I feel as if you had taken advantage of my indulgence. Most decidedly you 
should have spoken to me first." 
Catherine hesitated a moment, and then, "It was because I was afraid you 
wouldn't like it," she confessed. 
"Ah, there it is! You had a bad conscience." 
"No, I have not a bad conscience, Father!" the girl cried out, with 
considerable energy. "Please don't accuse me of anything so dreadful!" 
These words, in fact, represented to her imagination something very 
terrible indeed, something base and cruel, which she associated with 
malefactors and prisoners. "It was because I was afraid - afraid -" she 
went on. 
"If you were afraid, it was because you had been foolish." 
"I was afraid you didn't like Mr. Townsend." 
"You were quite right. I don't like him." 
"Dear Father, you don't know him," said Catherine, in a voice so timidly 
argumentative that it might have touched him. 
"Very true; I don't know him intimately. But I know him enough; I have my 
impression of him. You don't know him either." 
She stood before the fire with her hands lightly clasped in front of her; 
and her father, leaning back in his chair and looking up at her, made this 
remark with a placidity that might have been irritating. 
I doubt, however, whether Catherine was irritated, though she broke into a 
vehement protest. "I don't know him?" she cried. "Why, I know him - better 
than I have ever known anyone!" 
"You know a part of him - what he has chosen to show you. But you don't 
know the rest." 
"The rest? What is the rest?" 
"Whatever it may be, there is sure to be plenty of it." 
"I know what you mean," said Catherine, remembering how Morris had 
forewarned her. "You mean that he is mercenary." 
Her father looked up at her still, with his cold, quiet, reasonable eye. 
"If I meant it, my dear, I should say it! But there is an error I wish 
particularly to avoid - that of rendering Mr. Townsend more interesting to 
you by saying hard things about him." 
"I won't think them hard if they are true," said Catherine. 
"If you don't, you will be a remarkably sensible young woman!" 
"They will be your reasons, at any rate, and you will want me to hear your 
reasons." 
The doctor smiled a little. "Very true. You have a perfect right to ask for 
them." And he puffed his cigar a few moments. "Very well, then; without 
accusing Mr. Townsend of being in love only with your fortune - and with 
the fortune that you justly expect - I will say that there is every reason 
to suppose that these good things have entered into his calculation more 
largely than a tender solicitude for your happiness strictly requires. 
There is, of course, nothing impossible in an intelligent young man 
entertaining a disinterested affection for you. You are an honest, amiable 
girl, and an intelligent young man might easily find it out. But the 
principal thing that we know about this young man - who is, indeed, very 
intelligent - leads us to suppose that, however much he may value your 
personal merits, he values your money more. The principal thing we know 
about him is that he has led a life of dissipation, and has spent a fortune 
of his own in doing so. That is enough for me, my dear. I wish you to marry 
a young man with other antecedents - a young man who could give positive 
guarantees. If Morris Townsend has spent his own fortune in amusing 
himself, there is every reason to believe that he would spend yours." 
The doctor delivered himself of these remarks slowly, deliberately, with 
occasional pauses and prolongations of accent, which made no great 
allowance for poor Catherine's suspense as to his conclusion. She sat down 
at last, with her head bent and her eyes still fixed upon him, and 
strangely enough - I hardly know how to tell it - even while she felt that 
what he said went so terribly against her, she admired his neatness and 
nobleness of expression. There was something hopeless and oppressive in 
having to argue with her father; but she too, on her side, must try to be 
clear. He was so quiet; he was not at all angry; and she, too, must be 
quiet. But her very effort to be quiet made her tremble. 
"That is not the principal thing we know about him," she said; and there 
was a touch of her tremor in her voice. "There are other things - many 
other things. He has very high abilities - he wants so much to do 
something. He is kind, and generous, and true," said poor Catherine, who 
had not suspected hitherto the resources of her eloquence. "And his fortune 
- his fortune that he spent - was very small." 
"All the more reason he shouldn't have spent it," cried the doctor, getting 
up with a laugh. Then, as Catherine, who had also risen to her feet again, 
stood there in her rather angular earnestness, wishing so much and 
expressing so little, he drew her toward him and kissed her. "You won't 
think me cruel?" he said, holding her a moment. 
This question was not reassuring; it seemed to Catherine, on the contrary, 
to suggest possibilities which made her feel sick. But she answered 
coherently enough, "No, dear Father; because if you knew how I feel - and 
you must know, you know everything -you would be so kind, so gentle." 
"Yes, I think I know how you feel," the doctor said. "I will be very kind - 
be sure of that. And I will see Mr. Townsend tomorrow. Meanwhile, and for 
the present, be so good as to mention to no one that you are engaged."


Chapter 12

On the morrow, in the afternoon, he stayed at home, awaiting Mr. Townsend's 
call - a proceeding by which it appeared to him (justly perhaps, for he was 
a very busy man) that he paid Catherine's suitor great honour, and gave 
both these young people so much the less to complain of. Morris presented 
himself with a countenance sufficiently serene - he appeared to have 
forgotten the "insult" for which he had solicited Catherine's sympathy two 
evenings before - and Doctor Sloper lost no time in letting him know that 
he had been prepared for his visit. 
"Catherine told me yesterday what has been going on between you," he said. 
"You must allow me to say that it would have been becoming of you to give 
me notice of your intentions before they had gone so far." 
"I should have done so," Morris answered, "if you had not had so much the 
appearance of leaving your daughter at liberty. She seems to me quite her 
own mistress." 
"Literally, she is. But she has not emancipated herself morally quite so 
far, I trust, as to choose a husband without consulting me. I have left her 
at liberty, but I have not been in the least indifferent. The truth is, 
that your little affair has come to a head with a rapidity that surprises 
me. It was only the other day that Catherine made your acquaintance." 
"It was not long ago, certainly," said Morris, with great gravity. "I admit 
that we have not been slow to - to arrive at an understanding. But that was 
very natural, from the moment we were sure of ourselves - and of each 
other. My interest in Miss Sloper began the first time I saw her." 
"Did it not by chance precede your first meeting?" the doctor asked. 
Morris looked at him an instant. "I certainly had already heard that she 
was a charming girl." 
"A charming girl - that's what you think her?" 
"Assuredly. Otherwise I should not be sitting here." 
The doctor meditated a moment. "My dear young man," he said at last, "you 
must be very susceptible. As Catherine's father I have, I trust, a just and 
tender appreciation of her many good qualities; but I don't mind telling 
you that I have never thought of her as a charming girl, and never expected 
anyone else to do so." 
Morris Townsend received this statement with a smile that was not wholly 
devoid of deference. "I don't know what I might think of her if I were her 
father. I can't put myself in that place. I speak from my own point of 
view." 
"You speak very well," said the doctor, "but that is not all that is 
necessary. I told Catherine yesterday that I disapproved of her 
engagement." 
"She let me know as much, and I was very sorry to hear it. I am greatly 
disappointed." And Morris sat in silence awhile, looking at the floor. 
"Did you really expect I would say I was delighted, and throw my daughter 
into your arms?" 
"Oh no; I had an idea you didn't like me." 
"What gave you the idea?" 
"The fact that I am poor." 
"That has a harsh sound," said the doctor, "but it is about the truth - 
speaking of you strictly as a son-in-law. Your absence of means, of a 
profession, of visible resources or prospects, places you in a category 
from which it would be imprudent for me to select a husband for my 
daughter, who is a weak young woman with a large fortune. In any other 
capacity I am perfectly prepared to like you. As a son-in-law, I abominate 
you." 
Morris Townsend listened respectfully. "I don't think Miss Sloper is a weak 
woman," he presently said. 
"Of course you must defend her - it's the least you can do. But I have 
known my child twenty years, and you have known her six weeks. Even if she 
were not weak, however, you would still be a penniless man."
"Ah, yes; that is my weakness! And therefore, you mean, I am mercenary - I 
only want your daughter's money." 
"I don't say that. I am not obliged to say it; and to say it, save under 
stress of compulsion, would be very bad taste. I say simply that you belong 
to the wrong category." 
"But your daughter doesn't marry a category," Townsend urged, with his 
handsome smile. "She marries an individual - an individual whom she is so 
good as to say she loves." 
"An individual who offers so little in return." 
"Is it possible to offer more than the most tender affection and a lifelong 
devotion?" the young man demanded. 
"It depends how we take it. It is possible to offer a few other things 
besides, and not only is it possible, but it is the custom. A lifelong 
devotion is measured after the fact; and meanwhile it is usual in these 
cases to give a few material securities. What are yours? A very handsome 
face and figure, and a very good manner. They are excellent as far as they 
go, but they don't go far enough." 
"There is one thing you should add to them," said Morris, "the word of a 
gentleman." 
"The word of a gentleman that you will always love Catherine? You must be a 
fine gentleman to be sure of that." 
"The word of a gentleman that I am not mercenary; that my affection for 
Miss Sloper is as pure and disinterested a sentiment as was ever lodged in 
a human breast. I care no more for her fortune than for the ashes in that 
grate." 
"I take note - I take note," said the doctor. "But, having done so, I turn 
to our category again. Even with that solemn vow on your lips, you take 
your place in it. There is nothing against you but an accident, if you 
will; but, with my thirty years' medical practice, I have seen that 
accidents may have far-reaching consequences." 
Morris smoothed his hat - it was already remarkably glossy - and continued 
to display a self-control which, as the doctor was obliged to admit, was 
extremely creditable to him. But his disappointment was evidently keen. 
"Is there nothing I can do to make you believe in me?" 
"If there were, I should be sorry to suggest it, for - don't you see? - I 
don't want to believe in you," said the doctor, smiling. 
"I would go and dig in the fields." 
"That would be foolish."
"I will take the first work that offers tomorrow." 
"Do so by all means - but for your own sake, not for mine." 
"I see; you think I am an idler!" Morris exclaimed, a little too much in 
the tone of a man who has made a discovery. But he saw his error 
immediately, and blushed. 
"It doesn't matter what I think, when once I have told you I don't think of 
you as a son-in-law." 
But Morris persisted: "You think I would squander her money?"
The doctor smiled. "It doesn't matter, as I say; but I plead guilty to 
that." 
"That's because I spent my own, I suppose," said Morris. "I frankly confess 
that. I have been wild; I have been foolish. I will tell you every crazy 
thing I ever did, if you like. There were some great follies among the 
number - I have never concealed that. But I have sown my wild oats. Isn't 
there some proverb about a reformed rake? I was not a rake, but I assure 
you I have reformed. It is better to have amused one's self for awhile and 
have done with it. Your daughter would never care for a milksop; and I will 
take the liberty of saying that you would like one quite as little. 
Besides, between my money and hers there is a great difference. I spent my 
own; it was because it was my own that I spent it. And I made no debts; 
when it was gone I stopped. I don't owe a penny in the world." 
"Allow me to inquire what you are living on now - though I admit," the 
doctor added, "that the question, on my part, is inconsistent." 
"I am living on the remnants of my property," said Morris Townsend. 
"Thank you," the doctor gravely replied. 
Yes, certainly, Morris's self-control was laudable. "Even admitting I 
attach an undue importance to Miss Sloper's fortune," he went on, "would 
not that be in itself an assurance that I would take good care of it?" 
"That you should take too much care would be quite as bad as that you 
should take too little. Catherine might suffer as much by your economy as 
by your extravagance." 
"I think you are very unjust!" The young man made this declaration 
decently, civilly, without violence. 
"It is your privilege to think so, and I surrender my reputation to you! I 
certainly don't flatter myself I gratify you."
"Don't you care a little to gratify your daughter? Do you enjoy the idea of 
making her miserable?" 
"I am perfectly resigned to her thinking me a tyrant for a twelvemonth." 
"For a twelvemonth!" exclaimed Morris, with a laugh. 
"For a lifetime, then. She may as well be miserable in that way as in the 
other." 
Here at last Morris lost his temper. "Ah, you are not polite, sir!" he 
cried. 
"You push me to it - you argue too much." 
"I have a great deal at stake." 
"Well, whatever it is," said the doctor, "you have lost it." 
"Are you sure of that?" asked Morris. "Are you sure your daughter will give 
me up?" 
"I mean, of course, you have lost it as far as I am concerned. As for 
Catherine's giving you up - no, I am not sure of it. But as I shall 
strongly recommend it, as I have a great fund of respect and affection in 
my daughter's mind to draw upon, and as she has the sentiment of duty 
developed in a very high degree, I think it extremely possible." 
Morris Townsend began to smooth his hat again. "I, too, have a fund of 
affection to draw upon," he observed, at last. 
The doctor at this point showed his own first symptoms of irritation. "Do 
you mean to defy me?" 
"Call it what you please, sir. I mean not to give your daughter up." 
The doctor shook his head. "I haven't the least fear of your pining away 
your life. You are made to enjoy it." 
Morris gave a laugh. "Your opposition to my marriage is all the more cruel, 
then. Do you intend to forbid your daughter to see me again?" 
"She is past the age at which people are forbidden, and I am not a father 
in an old-fashioned novel. But I shall strongly urge her to break with 
you." 
"I don't think she will," said Morris Townsend. 
"Perhaps not; but I shall have done what I could." 
"She has gone too far - " Morris went on. 
"To retreat? Then let her stop where she is." 
"Too far to stop, I mean." 
The doctor looked at him a moment; Morris had his hand on the door. "There 
is a great deal of impertinence in your saying it." 
"I will say no more, sir," Morris answered; and, making his bow, he left 
the room. 


Chapter 13

It may be thought the doctor was too positive and Mrs. Almond intimated as 
much. But, as he said, he had his impression; it seemed to him sufficient, 
and he had no wish to modify it. He had passed his life in estimating 
people (it was part of the medical trade), and in nineteen cases out of 
twenty he was right.
"Perhaps Mr. Townsend is the twentieth case," said Mrs. Almond.
"Perhaps he is, though he doesn't look to me at all like a twentieth case. 
But I will give him the benefit of the doubt, and, to make sure, I will go 
and talk with Mrs. Montgomery. She will almost certainly tell me I have 
done right; but it is just possible that she will prove to me that I have 
made the greatest mistake of my life. If she does, I will beg Mr. 
Townsend's pardon. You needn't invite her to meet me, as you kindly 
proposed; I will write her a frank letter, telling her how matters stand, 
and asking leave to come and see her."
"I am afraid the frankness will be chiefly on your side. The poor little 
woman will stand up for her brother, whatever he may be."
"Whatever he may be! I doubt that. People are not always so fond of their 
brothers."
"Ah," said Mrs. Almond, "when it's a question of thirty thousand a year 
coming into a family-"
"If she stands up for him on account of the money, she will be a humbug. If 
she is a humbug, I shall see it. If I see it, I won't waste time with her."
"She is not a humbug - she is an exemplary woman. She will not wish to play 
her brother a trick simply because he is selfish."
"If she is worth talking to, she will sooner play him a trick than that he 
should play Catherine one. Has she seen Catherine, by the way - does she 
know her?"
"Not to my knowledge. Mr. Townsend can have had no particular interest in 
bringing them together."
"If she is an exemplary woman, no. But we shall see to what extent she 
answers your description."
"I shall be curious to hear her description of you," said Mrs. Almond, with 
a laugh. "And, meanwhile, how is Catherine taking it?"
"As she takes everything - as a matter of course."
"Doesn't she make a noise? Hasn't she made a scene?"
"She is not scenic."
"I thought a lovelorn maiden was always scenic."
"A ridiculous widow is more so. Lavinia has made me a speech; she thinks me 
very arbitrary."
"She has a talent for being in the wrong," said Mrs. Almond. "But I am very 
sorry for Catherine, all the same."
"So am I. But she will get over it."
"You believe she will give him up?"
"I count upon it. She has such an admiration for her father."
"Oh, we know all about that. But it only makes me pity her the more. It 
makes her dilemma the more painful, and the effort of choosing between you 
and her lover almost impossible."
"If she can't choose, all the better."
"Yes; but he will stand there entreating her to choose, and Lavinia will 
pull on that side."
"I am glad she is not on my side; she is capable of ruining an excellent 
cause. The day Lavinia gets into your boat it capsizes. But she had better 
be careful," said the doctor. "I will have no treason in my house."
"I suspect she will be careful; for she is at bottom very much afraid of 
you."
"They are both afraid of me, harmless as I am," the doctor answered. "And 
it is on that that I build - on the salutary terror I inspire."



Chapter 14

He wrote his frank letter to Mrs. Montgomery, who punctually answered it, 
mentioning an hour at which he might present himself in the Second Avenue. 
She lived in a neat little house of red brick, which had been freshly 
painted, with the edges of the bricks very sharply marked out in white. It 
has now disappeared, with its companions, to make room for a row of 
structures more majestic. There were green shutters upon the windows, 
without slats, but pierced with little holes, arranged in groups; and 
before the house was a diminutive "yard," ornamented with a bush of 
mysterious character, and surrounded by a low wooden paling, painted in the 
same green as the shutters. The place looked like a magnified baby-house, 
and might have been taken down from a shelf in a toy shop. Doctor Sloper, 
when he went to call, said to himself, as he glanced at the objects I have 
enumerated, that Mrs. Montgomery was evidently a thrifty and self-
respecting little person - the modest proportions of her dwelling seemed to 
indicate that she was of small stature - who took a virtuous satisfaction 
in keeping herself tidy, and had resolved that, since she might not be 
splendid, she would at least be immaculate. She received him in a little 
parlour, which was precisely the parlour he had expected: a small 
unspeckled bower, ornamented with a desultory foliage of tissue paper, and 
with clusters of glass drops, amidst which - to carry out the analogy - the 
temperature of the leafy season was maintained by means of a cast-iron 
stove, emitting a dry blue flame, and smelling strongly of varnish. The 
walls were embellished with engravings swathed in pink gauze, and the 
tables ornamented with volumes of extracts from the poets, usually bound in 
black cloth stamped with florid designs in jaundiced gilt. The doctor had 
time to take cognisance 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 
honour 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 apologised for 
being late; but he interrupted her.
"It doesn't matter," he said, "for while I sat here I had time to think 
over what I wish to say to you, and to make up my mind how to begin. "
"Oh, do begin!" murmured Mrs. Montgomery.
"It is not so easy," said the doctor, smiling. "You will have gathered from 
my letter that I wish to ask you a few questions, and you may not find it 
very comfortable to answer them."
"Yes; I have thought what I should say. It is not very easy."
"But you must understand my situation - my state of mind. Your brother 
wishes to marry my daughter, and I wish to find out what sort of a young 
man he is. A good way to do so seemed to be to come and ask you, which I 
have proceeded to do."
Mrs. Montgomery evidently took the situation very seriously; she was in a 
state of extreme moral concentration. She kept her pretty eyes, which were 
illumined by a sort of brilliant modesty, attached to his own countenance, 
and evidently paid the most earnest attention to each of his words. Her 
expression indicated that she thought his idea of coming to see her a very 
superior conception, but that she was really afraid to have opinions on 
strange subjects.
"I am extremely glad to see you," she said, in a tone which seemed to 
admit, at the same time, that this had nothing to do with the question.
The doctor took advantage of this admission. "I didn't come to see you for 
your pleasure; I came to make you say disagreeable things - and you can't 
like that. What sort of a gentleman is your brother?"
Mrs. Montgomery's illuminated gaze grew vague, and began to wander. She 
smiled a little, and for some time made no answer, so that the doctor at 
last became impatient. And her answer, when it came, was not satisfactory. 
"It is difficult to talk about one's brother."
"Not when one is fond of him, and when one has plenty of good to say. "
"Yes, even then, when a good deal depends on it," said Mrs. Montgomery.
"Nothing depends on it for you."
"I mean for - for-" and she hesitated.
"For your brother himself. I see."
"I mean for Miss Sloper," said Mrs. Montgomery.
The doctor liked this; it had the accent of sincerity. "Exactly; that's the 
point. If my poor girl should marry your brother, everything - as regards 
her happiness - would depend on his being a good fellow. She is the best 
creature in the world, and she could never do him a grain of injury. He, on 
the other hand, if he should not be all that we desire, might make her very 
miserable. That is why I want you to throw some light upon his character, 
you know. Of course, you are not bound to do it. My daughter, whom you have 
never seen, is nothing to you; and I, possibly, am only an indiscreet and 
impertinent old man. It is perfectly open to you to tell me that my visit 
is in very bad taste, and that I had better go about my business. But I 
don't think you will do this; because I think we shall interest you - my 
poor girl and I. I am sure that if you were to see Catherine she would 
interest you very much. I don't mean because she is interesting in the 
usual sense of the word, but because you would feel sorry for her. She is 
so soft, so simpleminded, she would be such an easy victim! A bad husband 
would have remarkable facilities for making her miserable; for she would 
have neither the intelligence nor the resolution to get the better of him, 
and yet she would have an exaggerated power of suffering. I see," added the 
doctor, with his most insinuating, his most professional laugh, "you are 
already interested. "
"I have been interested from the moment he told me he was engaged," said 
Mrs. Montgomery.
"Ah, he says that - he calls it an engagement?"
"Oh, he has told me you didn't like it."
"Did he tell you that I don't like him?"
"Yes, he told me that too. I said I couldn't help it," added Mrs. 
Montgomery.
"Of course you can't. But what you can do is to tell me I am right - to 
give me an attestation, as it were." And the doctor accompanied this remark 
with another professional smile.
Mrs. Montgomery, however, smiled not at all; it was obvious that she could 
not take the humorous view of his appeal. "That is a good deal to ask," she 
said, at last.
"There can be no doubt of that; and I must, in conscience, remind you of 
the advantages a young man marrying my daughter would enjoy. She has an 
income of ten thousand dollars in her own right, left her by her mother; if 
she marries a husband I approve, she will come into almost twice as much 
more at my death."
Mrs. Montgomery listened in great earnestness to this splendid financial 
statement; she had never heard thousands of dollars so familiarly talked 
about. She flushed a little with excitement. "Your daughter will be 
immensely rich," she said, softly.
"Precisely - that's the bother of it."
"And if Morris should marry her, he - he-" And she hesitated,
"He would be master of all that money? By no means. He would be master of 
the ten thousand a year that she has from her mother; but I should leave 
every penny of my own fortune, earned in the laborious exercise of my 
profession, to my nephews and nieces."
Mrs. Montgomery dropped her eyes at this, and sat for some time gazing at 
the straw matting which covered her floor.
"I suppose it seems to you," said the doctor, laughing, "that in so doing I 
should play your brother a very shabby trick."
"Not at all. That is too much money to get possession of so easily by 
marrying. I don't think it would be right."
"It's right to get all one can. But in this case your brother wouldn't be 
able. If Catherine marries without my consent, she doesn't get a penny from 
my own pocket."
"Is that certain?" asked Mrs. Montgomery, looking up.
"As certain as that I sit here."
"Even if she should pine away?"
"Even if she should pine to a shadow, which isn't probable."
"Does Morris know this?"
"I shall be most happy to inform him," the doctor exclaimed.
Mrs. Montgomery resumed her meditations; and her visitor, who was prepared 
to give time to the affair, asked himself whether, in spite of her little 
conscientious air, she was not playing into her brother's hands. At the 
same time he was half ashamed of the ordeal to which he had subjected her, 
and was touched by the gentleness with which she bore it. "If she were a 
humbug," he said, "she would get angry, unless she be very deep indeed. It 
is not probable that she is as deep as that."
"What makes you dislike Morris so much?" she presently asked, emerging from 
her reflections.
"I don't dislike him in the least as a friend, as a companion. He seems to 
me a charming fellow, and I should think he would be excellent company. I 
dislike him exclusively as a son-in-law. If the only office of a son-in-law 
were to dine at the paternal table, I should set a high value upon your 
brother: He dines capitally. But that is a small part of his function, 
which, in general, is to be a protector and caretaker of my child, who is 
singularly ill-adapted to take care of herself. It is there that he doesn't 
satisfy me. I confess I have nothing but my impression to go by; but I am 
in the habit of trusting my impression. Of course you are at liberty to 
contradict it flat. He strikes me as selfish and shallow."
Mrs. Montgomery's eyes expanded a little, and the doctor fancied he saw the 
light of admiration in them. "I wonder you have discovered he is selfish," 
she exclaimed.
"Do you think he hides it so well?"
"Very well indeed," said Mrs. Montgomery. "And I think we are all rather 
selfish," she added, quickly.
"I think so too; but I have seen people hide it better than he. You see I 
am helped by a habit I have of dividing people into classes, into types. I 
may easily be mistaken about your brother as an individual, but his type is 
written on his whole person."
"He is very good-looking," said Mrs. Montgomery.
The doctor eyed her a moment. "You women are all the same! But the type to 
which your brother belongs was made to be the ruin of you, and you were 
made to be its handmaids and victims. The sign of the type in question is 
the determination - sometimes terrible in its quiet intensity - to accept 
nothing of life but its pleasures, and to secure these pleasures chiefly by 
the aid of your complaisant sex. Young men of this class never do anything 
for themselves that they can get other people to do for them, and it is the 
infatuation, the devotion, the superstition of others that keeps them 
going. These others, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, are women. What 
our young friends chiefly insist upon is that someone else shall suffer for 
them; and women do that sort of thing, as you must know, wonderfully well." 
The doctor paused a moment, and then he added, abruptly, "You have suffered 
immensely for your brother!"
This exclamation was abrupt, as I say, but it was also perfectly 
calculated. The doctor had been rather disappointed at not finding his 
compact and comfortable little hostess surrounded in a more visible degree 
by the ravages of Morris Townsend's immorality; but he had said to himself 
that this was not because the young man had spared her, but because she had 
contrived to plaster up her wounds. They were aching there behind the 
varnished stove, the festooned engravings, beneath her own neat little 
poplin bosom; and if he could only touch the tender spot, she would make a 
movement that would betray her. The words I have just quoted were an 
attempt to put his finger suddenly upon the place, and they had some of the 
success that he looked for. The tears sprung for a moment to Mrs. 
Montgomery's eyes, and she indulged in a proud little jerk of the head.
"I don't know how you have found that out!" she exclaimed.
"By a philosophic trick - by what they call induction. You know you have 
always your option of contradicting me. But kindly answer me a question: 
Don't you give your brother money? I think you ought to answer that."
"Yes, I have given him money," said Mrs. Montgomery.
"And you have not had much to give him?"
She was silent a moment. "If you ask me for a confession of poverty, that 
is easily made. I am very poor."
"One would never suppose it from your - your charming house," said the 
doctor. "I learned from my sister that your income was moderate, and your 
family numerous."
"I have five children," Mrs. Montgomery observed, "but I am happy to say I 
can bring them up decently."
"Of course you can - accomplished and devoted as you are. But your brother 
has counted them over, I suppose?"
"Counted them over?"
"He knows there are five, I mean. He tells me it is he that brings them 
up."
Mrs. Montgomery stared a moment, and then quickly - "Oh yes; he teaches 
them - Spanish."
The doctor laughed out. "That must take a great deal off your hands! Your 
brother also knows, of course, that you have very little money?"
"I have often told him so," Mrs. Montgomery exclaimed, more unreservedly 
than she had yet spoken. She was apparently taking some comfort in the 
doctor's clairvoyance.
"Which means that you have often occasion to, and that he often sponges on 
you. Excuse the crudity of my language; I simply express a fact. I don't 
ask you how much of your money he has had, it is none of my business. I 
have ascertained what I suspected - what I wished." And the doctor got up, 
gently smoothing his hat. "Your brother lives on you," he said, as he stood 
there.
Mrs. Montgomery quickly rose from her chair, following her visitor's 
movements with a look of fascination. But then, with a certain 
inconsequence, "I have never complained of him," she said.
"You needn't protest - you have not betrayed him. But I advise you not to 
give him any more money."
"Don't you see it is in my interest that he should marry a rich person?" 
she asked. "If, as you say, he lives on me, I can only wish to get rid of 
him; and to put obstacles in the way of his marrying is to increase my own 
difficulties."
"I wish very much you would come to me with your difficulties," said the 
doctor. "Certainly, if I throw him back on your hands, the least I can do 
is to help you to bear the burden. If you will allow me to say so, then, I 
shall take the liberty of placing in your hands, for the present, a certain 
fund for your brother's support."
Mrs. Montgomery stared; she evidently thought he was jesting; but she 
presently saw that he was not, and the complication of her feelings became 
painful. "It seems to me that I ought to be very much offended with you," 
she murmured.
"Because I have offered you money? That's a superstition," said the doctor. 
"You must let me come and see you again, and we will talk about these 
things. I suppose that some of your children are girls?"
"I have two little girls," said Mrs. Montgomery.
"Well, when they grow up, and begin to think of taking husbands, you will 
see how anxious you will be about the moral character of these husbands. 
Then you will understand this visit of mine."
"Ah, you are not to believe that Morris's moral character is bad."
The doctor looked at her a little, with folded arms. "There is something I 
should greatly like, as a moral satisfaction. I should like to hear you 
say, 'He is abominably selfish.'"
The words came out with the grave distinctness of his voice, and they 
seemed for an instant to create, to poor Mrs. Montgomery's troubled vision, 
a material image. She gazed at it an instant, and then she turned away. 
"You distress me, sir!" she exclaimed. "He is, after all, my brother; and 
his talents, his talents-" On these last words her voice quavered, and 
before he knew it she had burst into tears.
"His talents are first-rate," said the doctor. "We must find the proper 
field for them." And he assured her most respectfully of his regret at 
having so greatly discomposed her. "It's all for my poor Catherine," he 
went on. "You must know her, and you will see."
Mrs. Montgomery brushed away her tears, and blushed at having shed them. "I 
should like to know your daughter," she answered; and then, in an instant, 
"Don't let her marry him!"
Doctor Sloper went away with the words gently humming in his ears: "Don't 
let her marry him!" They gave him the moral satisfaction of which he had 
just spoken, and their value was the greater that they had evidently cost a 
pang to poor little Mrs. Montgomery's family



Chapter 15

He had been puzzled by the way that Catherine carried herself; her attitude 
at this sentimental crisis seemed to him unnaturally passive. She had not 
spoken to him again after that scene in the library, the day before his 
interview with Morris; and a week had elapsed without making any change in 
her manner. There was nothing in it that appealed for pity, and he was even 
a little disappointed at her not giving him an opportunity to make up for 
his harshness by some manifestation of liberality which should operate as a 
compensation. He thought a little of offering to take her for a tour in 
Europe; but he was determined to do this only in case she should seem 
mutely to reproach him. He had an idea that she would display a talent for 
mute reproaches, and he was surprised at not finding himself exposed to 
these silent batteries. She said nothing, either tacitly or explicitly, and 
as she was never very talkative, there was now no especial eloquence in her 
reserve. And poor Catherine was not sulky - a style of behaviour for which 
she had too little histrionic talent - she was simply very patient. Of 
course she was thinking over her situation, and she was apparently doing so 
in a deliberate and unimpassioned manner, with a view of making the best of 
it.
"She will do as I have bidden her," said the doctor; and he made the 
further reflection that his daughter was not a woman of a great spirit.
I know not whether he had hoped for a little more resistance for the sake 
of a little more entertainment; but he said to himself, as he had said 
before, that though it might have its momentary alarms, paternity was, 
after all, not an exciting vocation.
Catherine meanwhile had made a discovery of a very different sort; it had 
become vivid to her that there was a great excitement in trying to be a 
good daughter. She had an entirely new feeling, which may be described as a 
state of expectant suspense about her own actions. She watched herself as 
she would have watched another person, and wondered what she would do. It 
was as if this other person, who was both herself and not herself, had 
suddenly sprung into being, inspiring her with a natural curiosity as to 
the performance of untested functions.
"I am glad I have such a good daughter," said her father, kissing her, 
after the lapse of several days.
"I am trying to be good," she answered, turning away, with a conscience not 
altogether clear.
"If there is anything you would like to say to me, you know you must not 
hesitate. You needn't feel obliged to be so quiet. I shouldn't care that 
Mr. Townsend should be a frequent topic of conversation, but whenever you 
have anything particular to say about him I shall be very glad to hear it."
"Thank you," said Catherine, "I have nothing particular at present."
He never asked her whether she had seen Morris again, because he was sure 
that if this had been the case she would tell him. She had, in fact, not 
seen him; she had only written him a long letter. The letter, at least, was 
long for her; and, it may be added, that it was long for Morris; it 
consisted of five pages, in a remarkably neat and handsome hand. 
Catherine's handwriting was beautiful, and she was even a little proud of 
it: She was extremely fond of copying, and possessed volumes of extracts 
which testified to this accomplishment; volumes which she had exhibited one 
day to her lover, when the bliss of feeling that she was important in his 
eyes was exceptionally keen. She told Morris, in writing, that her father 
had expressed the wish that she should not see him again, and that she 
begged he would not come to the house until she should have "made up her 
mind." Morris replied with a passionate epistle, in which he asked to what, 
in heaven's name, she wished to make up her mind. Had not her mind been 
made up two weeks before, and could it be possible that she entertained the 
idea of throwing him off? Did she mean to break down at the very beginning 
of their ordeal, after all the promises of fidelity she had both given and 
extracted? And he gave an account of his own interview with her father - an 
account not identical at all points with that offered in these pages. "He 
was terribly violent," Morris wrote, "but you know my self-control. I have 
need of it all when I remember that I have it in my power to break in upon 
your cruel captivity." Catherine sent him, in answer to this, a note of 
three lines. "I am in great trouble; do not doubt of my affection, but let 
me wait a little and think." The idea of a struggle with her father, of 
setting up her will against his own, was heavy on her soul, and it kept her 
quiet, as a great physical weight keeps us motionless. It never entered 
into her mind to throw her lover off; but from the first she tried to 
assure herself that there would be a peaceful way out of their difficulty. 
The assurance was vague, for it contained no element of positive conviction 
that her father would change his mind. She only had an idea that if she 
should be very good, the situation would in some mysterious manner improve. 
To be good she must be patient, outwardly submissive, abstain from judging 
her father too harshly, and from committing any act of open defiance. He 
was perhaps right, after all, to think as he did; by which Catherine meant 
not in the least that his judgement of Morris's motives in seeking to marry 
her was perhaps a just one, but that it was probably natural and proper 
that conscientious parents should be suspicious and even unjust. There were 
probably people in the world as bad as her father supposed Morris to be, 
and if there were the slightest chance of Morris being one of these 
sinister persons, the doctor was right in taking it into account. Of course 
he could not know what she knew - how the purest love and truth were seated 
in the young man's eyes; but heaven, in its time, might appoint a way of 
bringing him to such knowledge. Catherine expected a good deal of heaven, 
and referred to the skies the initiative, as the French say, in dealing 
with her dilemma. She could not imagine herself imparting any kind of 
knowledge to her father; there was something superior even in his 
injustice, and absolute in his mistakes. But she could at least be good, 
and if she were only good enough, heaven would invent some way of 
reconciling all things - the dignity of her father's errors and the 
sweetness of her own confidence, the strict performance of her filial 
duties, and the enjoyment of Morris Townsend's affection.
Poor Catherine would have been glad to regard Mrs. Penniman as an 
illuminating agent, a part which this lady herself, indeed, was but 
imperfectly prepared to play. Mrs. Penniman took too much satisfaction in 
the sentimental shadows of this little drama to have, for the moment, any 
great interest in dissipating them. She wished the plot to thicken, and the 
advice that she gave her niece tended, in her own imagination, to produce 
this result. It was rather incoherent counsel, and from one day to another 
it contradicted itself; but it was pervaded by an earnest desire that 
Catherine should do something striking. "You must act, my dear; in your 
situation the great thing is to act," said Mrs. Penniman, who found her 
niece altogether beneath her opportunities. Mrs. Penniman's real hope was 
that the girl would make a secret marriage, at which she should officiate 
as brideswoman or duenna. She had a vision of this ceremony being performed 
in some subterranean chapel - subterranean chapels in New York were not 
frequent, but Mrs. Penniman's imagination was not chilled by trifles - and 
of the guilty couple - she liked to think of poor Catherine and her suitor 
as the guilty couple - being shuffled away in a fast-whirling vehicle to 
some obscure lodging in the suburbs, where she would pay them (in a thick 
veil) clandestine visits; where they would endure a period of romantic 
privation; and when ultimately, after she should have been their earthly 
providence, their intercessor, their advocate, and their medium of 
communication with the world, they would be reconciled to her brother in an 
artistic tableau, in which she herself should be somehow the central 
figure. She hesitated as yet to recommend this course to Catherine, but she 
attempted to draw an attractive picture of it to Morris Townsend. She was 
in daily communication with the young man, whom she kept informed by 
letters of the state of affairs in Washington Square. As he had been 
banished, as she said, from the house, she no longer saw him; but she ended 
by writing to him that she longed for an interview. This interview could 
take place only on neutral ground, and she bethought herself greatly before 
selecting a place of meeting. She had an inclination for Greenwood 
Cemetery, but she gave it up as too distant; she could not absent herself 
for so long, as she said, without exciting suspicion. Then she thought of 
the Battery, but that was rather cold and windy, besides one's being 
exposed to intrusion from the Irish immigrants who at this point alight, 
with large appetites, in the New World; and at last she fixed upon an 
oyster saloon in the Seventh Avenue, kept by a Negro - an establishment of 
which she knew nothing save that she had noticed it in passing. She made an 
appointment with Morris Townsend to meet him there, and she went to the 
tryst at dusk, enveloped in an impenetrable veil. He kept her waiting for 
half an hour - he had almost the whole width of the city to traverse - but 
she liked to wait, it seemed, to intensify the situation. She ordered a cup 
of tea, which proved excessively bad, and this gave her a sense that she 
was suffering in a romantic cause. When Morris at last arrived, they sat 
together for half an hour in the duskiest corner of the back shop; and it 
is hardly too much to say that this was the happiest half hour that Mrs. 
Penniman had known for years. The situation was really thrilling, and it 
scarcely seemed to her a false note when her companion asked for an oyster 
stew, and proceeded to consume it before her eyes. Morris, indeed, needed 
all the satisfaction that stewed oysters could give him, for it may be 
intimated to the reader that he regarded Mrs. Penniman in the light of a 
fifth wheel to his coach. He was in a state of irritation natural to a 
gentleman of fine parts who had been snubbed in a benevolent attempt to 
confer a distinction upon a young woman of inferior characteristics, and 
the insinuating sympathy of this somewhat desiccated matron appeared to 
offer him no practical relief. He thought her a humbug, and he judged of 
humbugs with a good deal of confidence. He had listened and made himself 
agreeable to her at first, in order to get a footing in Washington Square; 
and at present he needed all his self-command to be decently civil. It 
would have gratified him to tell her that she was a fantastic old woman, 
and that he would like to put her into an omnibus and send her home. We 
know, however, that Morris possessed the virtue of self-control, and he had 
moreover the constant habit of seeking to be agreeable; so that, although 
Mrs. Penniman's demeanour only exasperated his already unquiet nerves, he 
listened to her with a sombre deference in which she found much to admire.



Chapter 16

They had of course immediately spoken of Catherine. "Did she send a 
message, or - or anything?" Morris asked. He appeared to think that she 
might have sent him a trinket or a lock of her hair.
Mrs. Penniman was slightly embarrassed, for she had not told her niece of 
her intended expedition. "Not exactly a message," she said. "I didn't ask 
her for one, because I was afraid to - to excite her."
"I am afraid she is not very excitable." And Morris gave a smile of some 
bitterness.
"She is better than that - she is steadfast, she is true."
"Do you think she will hold fast, then?"
"To the death!"
"Oh, I hope it won't come to that," said Morris.
"We must be prepared for the worst, and that is what I wish to speak to you 
about."
"What do you call the worst?"
"Well," said Mrs. Penniman, "my brother's hard, intellectual nature."
"Oh, the devil!"
"He is impervious to pity," Mrs. Penniman added, by way of explanation.
"Do you mean that he won't come round?"
"He will never be vanquished by argument. I have studied him. He will be 
vanquished only by the accomplished fact."
"The accomplished fact?"
"He will come round afterward," said Mrs. Penniman, with extreme 
significance. "He cares for nothing but facts - he must be met by facts."
"Well," rejoined Morris, "it is a fact that I wish to marry his daughter. I 
met him with that the other day, but he was not at all vanquised."
Mrs. Penniman was silent a little, and her smile beneath the shadow of her 
capacious bonnet, on the edge of which her black veil was arranged 
curtainwise, fixed itself upon Morris's face with a still more tender 
brilliancy. "Marry Catherine first, and meet him afterward!" she exclaimed.
"Do you recommend that?" asked the young man, frowning heavily.
She was a little frightened, but she went on with considerable boldness. 
"That is the way I see it: a private marriage - a private marriage." She 
repeated the phrase because she liked it.
"Do you mean that I should carry Catherine off? What do they call it - 
elope with her?"
"It is not a crime when you are driven to it," said Mrs. Penniman. "My 
husband, as I have told you, was a distinguished clergyman - one of the 
most eloquent men of his day. He once married a young couple that had fled 
from the house of the young lady's father; he was so interested in their 
story. He had no hesitation, and everything came out beautifully. The 
father was afterward reconciled, and thought everything of the young man. 
Mr. Penniman married them in the evening, about seven o'clock. The church 
was so dark you could scarcely see, and Mr. Penniman was intensely agitated 
- he was so sympathetic. I don't believe he could have done it again."
"Unfortunately, Catherine and I have not Mr. Penniman to marry us," said 
Morris.
"No, but you have me!" rejoined Mrs. Penniman, expressively. "I can't 
perform the ceremony, but I can help you; I can watch!"
"The woman's an idiot!" thought Morris, but he was obliged to say something 
different. It was not, however, materially more civil. "Was it in order to 
tell me this that you requested I would meet you
Mrs. Penniman had been conscious of a certain vagueness in her errand, and 
of not being able to offer him any very tangible reward for his long walk. 
"I thought perhaps you would like to see one who is so near to Catherine," 
she observed, with considerable majesty, "and also," she added, "that you 
would value an opportunity of sending her something."
Morris extended his empty hands with a melancholy smile. "I am greatly 
obliged to you, but I have nothing to send."
"Haven't you a word?" asked his companion, with her suggestive smile coming 
back.
Morris frowned again.
"Tell her to hold fast," he said, rather curtly.
"That is a good word - a noble word: It will make her happy for many days. 
She is very touching, very brave," Mrs. Penniman went on, arranging her 
mantle and preparing to depart. While she was so engaged she had an 
inspiration; she found the phrase that she could boldly offer as a 
vindication of the step she had taken. "If you marry Catherine at all 
risks," she said, "you will give my brother a proof of your being what he 
pretends to doubt."
"What he pretends to doubt?"
"Don't you know what that is?" Mrs. Penniman asked, almost playfully.
"It does not concern me to know," said Morris, grandly.
"Of course it makes you angry."
"I despise it," Morris declared.
"Ah, you know what it is, then?" said Mrs. Penniman, shaking her finger at 
him. "He pretends that you like - you like the money."
Morris hesitated a moment; and then, as if he spoke advisedly, "I do like 
the money!"
"Ah, but not - but not as he means it. You don't like it more than 
Catherine."
He leaned his elbows on the table and buried his head in his hands. "You 
torture me!" he murmured. And, indeed, this was almost the effect of the 
poor lady's too importunate interest in his situation.
But she insisted in making her point. "If you marry her in spite of him, he 
will take for granted that you expect nothing of him, and are prepared to 
do without it; and so he will see that you are disinterested."
Morris raised his head a little, following this argument. "And what shall I 
gain by that?"
"Why, that he will see that he has been wrong in thinking that you wished 
to get his money."
"And seeing that I wish he would go to the deuce with it, he will leave it 
to a hospital. Is that what you mean?" asked Morris.
"No, I don't mean that, though that would be very grand," Mrs. Penniman 
quickly added. "I mean that, having done you such an injustice, he will 
think it his duty, at the end, to make some amends."
Morris shook his head, though it must be confessed he was a little struck 
with this idea. "Do you think he is so sentimental?"
"He is not sentimental," said Mrs. Penniman, "but, to be perfectly fair to 
him, I think he has, in his own narrow way, a certain sense of duty."
There passed through Morris Townsend's mind a rapid wonder as to what he 
might, even under a remote contingency, be indebted to from the action of 
this principle in Doctor Sloper's breast, and the inquiry exhausted itself 
in his sense of the ludicrous. "Your brother has no duties to me," he said 
presently, "and I none to him."
"Ah, but he has duties to Catherine."
"Yes; but you see, on that principle Catherine has duties to him as well."
Mrs. Penniman got up with a melancholy sigh, as if she thought him very 
unimaginative. "She has always performed them faithfully; and now do you 
think she has no duties to you?" Mrs. Penniman always, even in 
conversation, italicised her personal pronouns.
"It would sound harsh to say so. I am so grateful for her love," Morris 
added.
"I will tell her you said that. And now, remember that if you need me I am 
there." And Mrs. Penniman, who could think of nothing more to say, nodded 
vaguely in the direction of Washington Square.
Morris looked some moments at the sanded floor of the shop; he seemed to be 
disposed to linger a moment. At last, looking up with a certain abruptness, 
"It is your belief that if she marries me he will cut her off?" he asked.
Mrs. Penniman stared a little, and smiled. "Why, I have explained to you 
what I think would happen - that in the end it would be the best thing to 
do."
"You mean that, whatever she does, in the long run she will get the money?"
"It doesn't depend upon her, but upon you. Venture to appear as 
disinterested as you are," said Mrs. Penniman, ingeniously. Morris dropped 
his eyes on the sanded floor again, pondering this, and she pursued: "Mr. 
Penniman and I had nothing, and we were very happy. Catherine, moreover, 
has her mother's fortune, which, at the time my sister-in-law married, was 
considered a very handsome one."
"Oh, don't speak of that!" said Morris; and indeed it was quite 
superfluous, for he had contemplated the fact in all its lights.
"Austin married a wife with money - why shouldn't you?"
"Ah, but your brother was a doctor," Morris objected.
"Well, all young men can't be doctors."
"I should think it an extremely loathsome profession," said Morris, with an 
air of intellectual independence; then, in a moment, he went on rather 
inconsequently, "Do you suppose there is a will already made in Catherine's 
favour?"
"I suppose so even doctors must die; and perhaps a little in mine," Mrs. 
Penniman frankly added.
"And you believe he would certainly change it - as regards Catherine?"
"Yes; and then change it back again."
"Ah, but one can't depend on that," said Morris.
"Do you want to depend on it?" Mrs. Penniman asked.
Morris blushed a little. "Well, I am certainly afraid of being the cause of 
an injury to Catherine."
"Ah, you must not be afraid. Be afraid of nothing, and everything will go 
well."
And then Mrs. Penniman paid for her cup of tea, and Morris paid for his 
oyster stew, and they went out together into the dimly lighted wilderness 
of the Seventh Avenue. The dusk had closed in completely, and the street 
lamps were separated by wide intervals of a pavement in which cavities and 
fissures played a disproportionate part. An omnibus, emblazoned with 
strange pictures, went tumbling over the dislocated cobblestones.
"How will you go home?" Morris asked, following this vehicle with an 
interested eye. Mrs. Penniman had taken his arm.
She hesitated a moment. "I think this manner would be pleasant," she said; 
and she continued to let him feel the value of his support.
So he walked with her through the devious ways of the west side of the 
town, and through the bustle of gathering nightfall in populous streets, to 
the quiet precinct of Washington Square. They lingered a moment at the foot 
of Doctor Sloper's white marble steps, above which a spotless white door, 
adorned with a glittering silver plate, seemed to figure for Morris the 
closed portal of happiness; and then Mrs. Penniman's companion rested a 
melancholy eye upon a lighted window in the upper part of the house.
"That is my room - my dear little room!" Mrs. Penniman remarked.
Morris started. "Then I needn't come walking round the Square to gaze at 
it."
"That's as you please. But Catherine's is behind; two noble windows on the 
second floor. I think you can see them from the other
"I don't want to see them, ma'am." And Morris turned his back to the house.
"I will tell her you have been here, at any rate," said Mrs. Penniman, 
pointing to the spot where they stood, "and I will give her your message - 
that she is to hold fast."
"Oh yes; of course. You know I write her all that."
"It seems to say more when it is spoken. And remember, if you need me, that 
I am here," and Mrs. Penniman glanced at the third floor.
On this they separated, and Morris, left to himself, stood looking at the 
house a moment; after which he turned away, and took a gloomy walk round 
the Square, on the opposite side, close to the wooden fence. Then he came 
back, and paused for a minute in front of Doctor Sloper's dwelling. His 
eyes travelled over it; they even rested on the ruddy windows of Mrs. 
Penniman's apartment. He thought it a devilish comfortable house.



Chapter 17

Mrs Penniman told Catherine that evening - the two ladies were sitting in 
the back parlour - that she had had an interview with Morris Townsend; and 
on receiving this news the girl started with a sense of pain. She felt 
angry for the moment; it was almost the first time she had ever felt angry. 
It seemed to her that her aunt was meddlesome; and from this came a vague 
apprehension that she would spoil something.
"I don't see why you should have seen him. I don't think it was right," 
Catherine said.
"I was so sorry for him - it seemed to me someone ought to see him."
"No one but I," said Catherine, who felt as if she were making the most 
presumptuous speech of her life, and yet at the same time had an instinct 
that she was right in doing so.
"But you wouldn't, my dear," Aunt Lavinia rejoined, "and I didn't know what 
might have become of him."
"I have not seen him because my father has forbidden it," Catherine said, 
very simply.
There was a simplicity in this, indeed, which fairly vexed Mrs. Penniman. 
"If your father forbade you to go to sleep, I suppose you would keep 
awake!" she commented.
Catherine looked at her. "I don't understand you. You seem to me very 
strange."
"Well, my dear, you will understand me someday!" And Mrs. Penniman, who was 
reading the evening paper, which she perused daily from the first line to 
the last, resumed her occupation. She wrapped herself in silence; she was 
determined Catherine should ask her for an account of her interview with 
Morris. But Catherine was silent for so long that she almost lost patience; 
and she was on the point of remarking to her that she was very heartless, 
when the girl at last spoke.
"What did he say?" she asked.
"He said he is ready to marry you any day, in spite of everything."
Catherine made no answer to this, and Mrs. Penniman almost lost patience 
again; owing to which she at last volunteered the information that Morris 
looked very handsome, but terribly haggard.
"Did he seem sad?" asked her niece.
"He was dark under the eyes," said Mrs. Penniman. "So different from when I 
first saw him; though I am not sure that if I had seen him in this 
condition the first time, I should not have been even more struck with him. 
There is something brilliant in his very misery."
This was, to Catherine's sense, a vivid picture, and though she 
disapproved, she felt herself gazing at it. "Where did you see him?" she 
asked, presently.
"In - in the Bowery; at a confectioner's," said Mrs. Penniman, who had a 
general idea that she ought to dissemble a little.
"Whereabouts is the place?" Catherine inquired, after another pause.
"Do you wish to go there, my dear?" said her aunt.
"Oh no." And Catherine got up from her seat and went to the fire, where she 
stood looking awhile at the glowing coals.
"Why are you so dry, Catherine?" Mrs. Penniman said at last.
"So dry?"
"So cold - so irresponsive."
The girl turned very quickly. "Did he say that?"
Mrs. Penniman hesitated a moment. "I will tell you what he said. He said he 
feared only one thing - that you would be afraid."
"Afraid of what?"
"Afraid of your father."
Catherine turned back to the fire again, and then, after a pause, she said, 
"I am afraid of my father."
Mrs. Penniman got quickly up from her chair and approached her niece. "Do 
you mean to give him up, then?"
Catherine for some time never moved; she kept her eyes on the coals. At 
last she raised her head and looked at her aunt. "Why do you push me so?" 
she asked.
"I don't push you. When have I spoken to you before?"
"It seems to me that you have spoken to me several times."
"I am afraid it is necessary, then, Catherine," said Mrs. Penniman, with a 
good deal of solemnity. "I am afraid you don't feel the importance" - she 
paused a little; Catherine was looking at her - "the importance of not 
disappointing that gallant young heart!" And Mrs. Penniman went back to her 
chair by the lamp, and, with a little jerk, picked up the evening paper 
again.
Catherine stood there before the fire, with her hands behind her, looking 
at her aunt, to whom it seemed that the girl had never had just this dark 
fixedness in her gaze. "I don't think you understand or that you know me," 
she said.
"If I don't, it is not wonderful; you trust me so little."
Catherine made no attempt to deny this charge, and for some time more 
nothing was said. But Mrs. Penniman's imagination was restless, and the 
evening paper failed on this occasion to enchain it.
"If you succumb to the dread of your father's wrath," she said, "I don't 
know what will become of us."
"Did he tell you to say these things to me?"
"He told me to use my influence."
"You must be mistaken," said Catherine. "He trusts me."
"I hope he may never repent of it!" And Mrs. Penniman gave a little sharp 
slap to her newspaper. She knew not what to make of her niece, who had 
suddenly become stern and contradictious.
This tendency on Catherine's part was presently even more apparent. "You 
had much better not make any more appointments with Mr. Townsend," she 
said. "I don't think it is right."
Mrs. Penniman rose with considerable majesty. "My poor child, are you 
jealous of me?" she inquired.
"Oh, Aunt Lavinia!" murmured Catherine, blushing.
"I don't think it is your place to teach me what is right."
On this point Catherine made no concession. "It can't be right to deceive."
"I certainly have not deceived you!"
"Yes; but I promised my father-"
"I have no doubt you promised your father. But I have promised him 
nothing."
Catherine had to admit this, and she did so in silence. "I don't believe 
Mr. Townsend himself likes it," she said, at last.
"Doesn't like meeting me?"
"Not in secret."
"It was not in secret; the place was full of people."
"But it was a secret place - away off in the Bowery."
Mrs. Penniman flinched a little. "Gentlemen enjoy such things," she 
remarked, presently. "I know what gentlemen like."
"My father wouldn't like it, if he knew."
"Pray, do you propose to inform him?" Mrs. Penniman inquired.
"No, Aunt Lavinia. But please don't do it again."
"If I do it again you will inform him - is that what you mean? I do not 
share your dread of my brother; I have always known how to defend my own 
position. But I shall certainly never again take any step on your behalf; 
you are much too thankless. I knew you were not a spontaneous nature, but I 
believed you were firm, and I told your father that he would find you so. I 
am disappointed, but your father will not be." And with this Mrs. Penniman 
offered her niece a brief good-night, and withdrew to her own apartment.



Chapter 18

Catherine sat alone by the parlour 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 misdemeanour 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 
parlour. At last the clock struck eleven, and the house was wrapped in 
silence; the servants had gone to bed. Catherine got up and went slowly to 
the door of the library, where she waited a moment, motionless. Then she 
knocked, and then she waited again. Her father had answered her, but she 
had not the courage to turn the latch. What she had said to her aunt was 
true enough - she was afraid of him; and in saying that she had no sense of 
weakness, she meant that she was not afraid of herself. She heard him move 
within, and he came and opened the door for her.
"What is the matter?" asked the doctor. "You are standing there like a 
ghost!"
She went into the room, but it was some time before she contrived to say 
what she had come to say. Her father, who was in his dressing gown and 
slippers, had been busy at his writing table, and after looking at her for 
some moments, and waiting for her to speak, he went and seated himself at 
his papers again. His back was turned to her - she began to hear the 
scratching of his pen. She remained near the door, with her heart thumping 
beneath her bodice; and she was very glad that his back was turned, for it 
seemed to her that she could more easily address herself to this portion of 
his person than to his face. At last she began, watching it while she 
spoke.
"You told me that if I should have anything more to say about Mr. Townsend 
you would be glad to listen to it."
"Exactly, my dear," said the doctor, not turning round, but stopping his 
pen.
Catherine wished it would go on, but she herself continued: "I thought I 
would tell you that I have not seen him again, but that I should like to do 
so."
"To bid him good-bye?" asked the doctor.
The girl hesitated a moment. "He is not going away."
The doctor wheeled slowly round in his chair, with a smile that seemed to 
accuse her of an epigram; but extremes meet, and Catherine had not intended 
one. "It is not to bid him good-bye, then?" her father said.
"No, Father, not that; at least not forever. I have not seen him again, but 
I should like to see him," Catherine repeated.
The doctor slowly rubbed his underlip with the feather of his quill.
"Have you written to him?"
"Yes, four times."
"You have not dismissed him, then. Once would have done that."
"No," said Catherine, "I have asked him - asked him to wait."
Her father sat looking at her, and she was afraid he was going to break out 
into wrath, his eyes were so fine and cold.
"You are a dear, faithful child," he said, at last. "Come here to your 
father." And he got up, holding out his hands toward her.
The words were a surprise, and they gave her an exquisite joy. She went to 
him, and he put his arm round her tenderly, soothingly; and then he kissed 
her. After this he said, "Do you wish to make me very happy?"
"I should like to - but I am afraid I can't," Catherine answered.
"You can if you will. It all depends on your will."
"Is it to give him up?" said Catherine.
"Yes, it is to give him up."
And he held her still, with the same tenderness, looking into her face and 
resting his eyes on her averted eyes. There was a long silence; she wished 
he would release her.
"You are happier than I, Father," she said, at last.
"I have no doubt you are unhappy just now. But it is better to be unhappy 
for three months and get over it, than for many years and never get over 
it."
"Yes, if that were so," said Catherine.
"It would be so; I am sure of that." She answered nothing, and he went on: 
"Have you no faith in my wisdom, in my tenderness, in my solicitude for 
your future?"
"Oh, Father!" murmured the girl.
"Don't you suppose that I know something of men - their vices, their 
follies, their falsities?"
She detached herself, and turned upon him. "He is not vicious - he is not 
false!"
Her father kept looking at her with his sharp, pure eye. "You make nothing 
of my judgement, then?"
"I can't believe that!"
"I don't ask you to believe it, but to take it on trust."
Catherine was far from saying to herself that this was an ingenious 
sophism; but she met the appeal none the less squarely. "What has he done - 
what do you know?"
"He has never done anything - he is a selfish idler."
"Oh, Father, don't abuse him!" she exclaimed, pleadingly.
"I don't mean to abuse him; it would be a great mistake. You may do as you 
choose," he added, turning away.
"I may see him again?"
"Just as you choose."
"Will you forgive me?"
"By no means."
"It will only be for once."
"I don't know what you mean by once. You must either give him up or 
continue the acquaintance."
"I wish to explain - to tell him to wait."
"To wait for what?"
"Till you know him better - till you consent."
"Don't tell him any such nonsense as that. I know him well enough, and I 
shall never consent."
"But we can wait a long time," said poor Catherine, in a tone which was 
meant to express the humblest conciliation, but which had upon her father's 
nerves the effect of an iteration not characterised by tact.
The doctor answered, however, quietly enough: "Of course; you can wait till 
I die, if you like."
Catherine gave a cry of natural horror.
"Your engagement will have one delightful effect upon you; it will make you 
extremely impatient for that event."
Catherine stood staring, and the doctor enjoyed the point he had made. It 
came to Catherine with the force - rather with the vague impressiveness - 
of a logical axiom which it was not in her province to controvert; and yet, 
though it was a scientific truth, she felt wholly unable to accept it.
"I would rather not marry, if that were true," she said.
"Give me a proof of it, then; for it is beyond a question that by engaging 
yourself to Morris Townsend you simply wait for my death."
She turned away, feeling sick and faint; and the doctor went on: "And if 
you wait for it with impatience, judge, if you please, what his eagerness 
will be."
Catherine turned it over - her father's words had such an authority for her 
that her very thoughts were capable of obeying him. There was a dreadful 
ugliness in it, which seemed to glare at her through the interposing medium 
of her own feebler reason. Suddenly, however, she had an inspiration - she 
almost knew it to be an inspiration.
"If I don't marry before your death, I will not after," she said.
To her father, it must be admitted, this seemed only another epigram; and 
as obstinacy, in unaccomplished minds, does not usually select such a mode 
of expression, he was the more surprised at this wanton play of a fixed 
idea.
"Do you mean that for an impertinence?" he inquired; an inquiry of which, 
as he made it, he quite perceived the grossness.
"An impertinence? Oh, Father, what terrible things you say!"
"If you don't wait for my death, you might as well marry immediately; there 
is nothing else to wait for."
For some time Catherine made no answer; but finally she said, "I think 
Morris - little by little - might persuade you."
"I shall never let him speak to me again. I dislike him too much."
Catherine gave a long, low sigh; she tried to stifle it, for she had made 
up her mind that it was wrong to make a parade of her trouble, and to 
endeavour to act upon her father by the meretricious aid of emotion. 
Indeed, she even thought it wrong - in the sense of being inconsiderate - 
to attempt to act upon his feelings at all; her part was to effect some 
gentle, gradual change in his intellectual perception of poor Morris's 
character. But the means of effecting such a change were at present 
shrouded in mystery, and she felt miserably helpless and hopeless. She had 
exhausted all arguments, all replies. Her father might have pitied her, and 
in fact he did so; but he was sure he was right.
"There is one thing you can tell Mr. Townsend when you see him again," he 
said, "that if you marry without my consent, I don't leave you a farthing 
of money. That will interest him more than anything else you can tell him."
"That would be very right," Catherine answered. "I ought not in that case 
to have a farthing of your money."
"My dear child," the doctor observed, laughing, "your simplicity is 
touching. Make that remark, in that tone, and with that expression of 
countenance, to Mr. Townsend, and take a note of his answer. It won't be 
polite - it will express irritation; and I shall be glad of that, as it 
will put me in the right; unless, indeed - which is perfectly possible - 
you should like him the better for being rude to you."
"He will never be rude to me," said Catherine, gently.
"Tell him what I say, all the same."
She looked at her father, and her quiet eyes filled with tears.
"I think I will see him, then," she murmured, in her timid voice.
"Exactly as you choose." And he went to the door and opened it for her to 
go out. The movement gave her a terrible sense of his turning her off.
"It will be only once, for the present," she added, lingering a moment.
"Exactly as you choose," he repeated, standing there with his hand on the 
door. "I have told you what I think. If you see him, you will be an 
ungrateful, cruel child; you will have given your old father the greatest 
pain of his life."
This was more than the poor girl could bear; her tears overflowed, and she 
moved toward her grimly consistent parent with a pitiful cry. Her hands 
were raised in supplication, but he sternly evaded this appeal. Instead of 
letting her sob out her misery on his shoulder, he simply took her by the 
arm and directed her course across the threshold, closing the door gently 
but firmly behind her. After he had done so, he remained listening. For a 
long time there was no sound; he knew that she was standing outside. He was 
sorry for her, as I have said; but he was so sure he was right. At last he 
heard her move away, and then her footstep creaked faintly upon the stairs.
The doctor took several turns round his study, with his hands in his 
pockets, and a thin sparkle, possibly of irritation, but partly also of 
something like humour, in his eye. "By Jove," he said to himself, "I 
believe she will stick - I believe she will stick!" And this idea of 
Catherine "sticking" appeared to have a comical side, and to offer a 
prospect of entertainment. He determined, as he said to himself, to see it 
out.



Chapter 19

It was for reasons connected with this determination that on the morrow he 
sought a few words of private conversation with Mrs. Penniman. He sent for 
her to the library, and he there informed her that he hoped very much that, 
as regarded this affair of Catherine's, she would mind her p's and q's.
"I don't know what you mean by such an expression," said his sister. "You 
speak as if I were learning the alphabet."
"The alphabet of common sense is something you will never learn," the 
doctor permitted himself to respond.
"Have you called me here to insult me?" Mrs. Penniman inquired.
"Not at all. Simply to advise you. You have taken up young Townsend; that's 
your own affair. I have nothing to do with your sentiments, your fancies, 
your affections, your delusions; but what I request of you is that you will 
keep these things to yourself. I have explained my views to Catherine; she 
understands them perfectly, and anything that she does further in the way 
of encouraging Mr. Townsend's attentions will be in deliberate opposition 
to my wishes. Anything that you should do in the way of giving her aid and 
comfort will be - permit me the expression - distinctly treasonable. You 
know high treason is a capital offence: Take care how you incur the 
penalty."
Mrs. Penniman threw back her head, with a certain expansion of the eye 
which she occasionally practised. "It seems to me that you talk like a 
great autocrat."
"I talk like my daughter's father."
"Not like your sister's brother," cried Lavinia.
"My dear Lavinia," said the doctor, "I sometimes wonder whether I am your 
brother, we are so extremely different. In spite of differences, however, 
we can, at a pinch, understand each other; and that is the essential thing 
just now. Walk straight with regard to Mr. Townsend; that's all I ask. It 
is highly probable you have been corresponding with him for the last three 
weeks - perhaps even seeing him. I don't ask you - you needn't tell me." He 
had a moral conviction that she would contrive to tell a fib about the 
matter, which it would disgust him to listen to. "Whatever you have done, 
stop doing it; that's all I wish."
"Don't you wish also by chance to murder your child?" Mrs. Penniman 
inquired.
"On the contrary, I wish to make her live and be happy."
"You will kill her: She passed a dreadful night."
"She won't die of one dreadful night, nor of a dozen. Remember that I am a 
distinguished physician."
Mrs. Penniman hesitated a moment; then she risked her retort. "Your being a 
distinguished physician has not prevented you from already losing two 
members of your family."
She had risked it, but her brother gave her such a terribly incisive look - 
a look so like a surgeon's lancet - that she was frightened at her courage. 
And he answered her, in words that corresponded to the look, "It may not 
prevent me, either, from losing the society of still another."
Mrs. Penniman took herself off with whatever air of depreciated merit was 
at her command, and repaired to Catherine's room, where the poor girl was 
closeted. She knew all about her dreadful night, for the two had met again, 
the evening before, after Catherine left her father. Mrs. Penniman was on 
the landing of the second floor when her niece came upstairs; it was not 
remarkable that a person of so much subtlety should have discovered that 
Catherine had been shut up with the doctor. It was still less remarkable 
that she should have felt an extreme curiosity to learn the result of this 
interview, and that this sentiment, combined with her great amiability and 
generosity, should have prompted her to regret the sharp words lately 
exchanged between her niece and herself. As the unhappy girl came into 
sight in the dusky corridor, she made a lively demonstration of sympathy. 
Catherine's bursting heart was equally oblivious; she only knew that her 
aunt was taking her into her arms. Mrs. Penniman drew her into Catherine's 
own room, and the two women sat there together far into the small hours, 
the younger one with her head on the other's lap, sobbing, and sobbing at 
first in a soundless, stifled manner, and then at last perfectly still. It 
gratified Mrs. Penniman to be able to feel conscientiously that this scene 
virtually removed the interdict which Catherine had placed upon her 
indulging in further communion with Morris Townsend. She was not gratified, 
however, when, in coming back to her niece's room before breakfast, she 
found that Catherine had risen and was preparing herself for this meal.
"You should not go to breakfast," she said. "You are not well enough, after 
your fearful night."
"Yes, I am very well, and I am only afraid of being late."
"I can't understand you," Mrs. Penniman cried. "You should stay in bed for 
three days."
"Oh, I could never do that," said Catherine, to whom this idea presented no 
attractions.
Mrs. Penniman was in despair; and she noted, with extreme annoyance, that 
the trace of the night's tears had completely vanished from Catherine's 
eyes. She had a most impracticable physique. "What effect do you expect to 
have upon your father," her aunt demanded, "if you come plumping down, 
without a vestige of any sort of feeling, as if nothing in the world had 
happened?"
"He would not like me to lie in bed," said Catherine, simply.
"All the more reason for your doing it. How else do you expect to move 
him?"
Catherine thought a little. "I don't know how; but not in that way. I wish 
to be just as usual." And she finished dressing - and, according to her 
aunt's expression, went plumping down into the paternal presence. She was 
really too modest for consistent pathos.
And yet it was perfectly true that she had had a dreadful night. Even after 
Mrs. Penniman left her she had had no sleep; she lay staring at the 
uncomforting gloom, with her eyes and ears filled with the movement with 
which her father had turned her out of his room, and of the words in which 
he had told her that she was a heartless daughter. Her heart was breaking; 
she had heart enough for that. At moments it seemed to her that she 
believed him, and that to do what she was doing a girl must indeed be bad. 
She was bad; but she couldn't help it. She would try to appear good, even 
if her heart were perverted; and from time to time she had a fancy that she 
might accomplish something by ingenious concessions to form, though she 
should persist in caring for Morris. Catherine's ingenuities were 
indefinite, and we are not called upon to expose their hollowness. The best 
of them, perhaps, showed itself in that freshness of aspect which was so 
discouraging to Mrs. Penniman, who was amazed at the absence of haggardness 
in a young woman who for a whole night had lain quivering beneath a 
father's curse. Poor Catherine was conscious of her freshness; it gave her 
a feeling about the future which rather added to the weight upon her mind. 
It seemed a proof that she was strong and solid and dense, and would live 
to a great age - longer than might be generally convenient; and this idea 
was pressing, for it appeared to saddle her with a pretension the more, 
just when the cultivation of any pretension was inconsistent with her doing 
right. She wrote that day to Morris Townsend, requesting him to come and 
see her on the morrow, using very few words, and explaining nothing. She 
would explain everything face to face.



Chapter 20

On the morrow, in the afternoon, she heard his voice at the door, and his 
step in the hall. She received him in the big, bright front parlour, and 
she instructed the servant that, if anyone should call, she was 
particularly engaged. She was not afraid of her father's coming in, for at 
that hour he was always driving about town. When Morris stood there before 
her, the first thing that she was conscious of was that he was even more 
beautiful to look at than fond recollection had painted him; the next was 
that he had pressed her in his arms. When she was free again it appeared to 
her that she had now indeed thrown herself into the gulf of defiance, and 
even, for an instant, that she had been married to him. 
He told her that she had been very cruel, and had made him very unhappy; 
and Catherine felt acutely the difficulty of her destiny, which forced her 
to give pain in such opposite quarters. But she wished that, instead of 
reproaches, however tender, he would give her help; he was certainly wise 
enough and clever enough to invent some issue from their troubles. She 
expressed this belief, and Morris received the assurance as if he thought 
it natural; but he interrogated at first - as was natural too - rather than 
committed himself to marking out a course. 
"You should not have made me wait so long," he said. "I don't know how I 
have been living; every hour seemed like years. You should have decided 
sooner." 
"Decided?" Catherine asked. 
"Decided whether you would keep me or give me up." 
"Oh, Morris," she cried, with a long, tender murmur, "I never thought of 
giving you up!" 
"What, then, were you waiting for?" The young man was ardently logical. 
"I thought my father might - might -" and she hesitated.
"Might see how unhappy you were?" 
"Oh no. But that he might look at it differently." 
"And now you have sent for me to tell me that at last he does so. Is that 
it?" 
This hypothetical optimism gave the poor girl a pang. "No, Morris," she 
said, solemnly, "he looks at it still in the same way." 
"Then why have you sent for me?" 
"Because I wanted to see you," cried Catherine, piteously. 
"That's an excellent reason, surely. But did you want to look at me only? 
Have you nothing to tell me?" 
His beautiful persuasive eyes were fixed upon her face, and she wondered 
what answer would be noble enough to make to such a gaze as that. For a 
moment her own eyes took it in, and then "I did want to look at you," she 
said, gently. But after this speech, most inconsistently, she hid her face. 
Morris watched her for a moment attentively, "Will you marry me tomorrow?" 
he asked, suddenly. 
"Tomorrow?" 
"Next week, then - any time within a month?" 
"Isn't it better to wait?" said Catherine. 
'To wait for what?" 
She hardly knew for what; but this tremendous leap alarmed her. "Till we 
have thought about it a little more." 
He shook his head sadly and reproachfully. "I thought you had been thinking 
about it these three weeks. Do you want to turn it over in your mind for 
five years? You have given me more than time enough. My poor girl," he 
added, in a moment, "you are not sincere." 
Catherine coloured from brow to chin, and her eyes filled with tears. "Oh, 
how can you say that?" she murmured. 
"Why, you must take me or leave me," said Morris, very reasonably. "You 
can't please your father and me both; you must choose between us." 
"I have chosen you," she said, passionately. 
'Then marry me next week!" 
She stood gazing at him. "Isn't there any other way?"
"None that I know of for arriving at the same result. If there is, I should 
be happy to hear of it." 
Catherine could think of nothing of the kind, and Morris's luminosity 
seemed almost pitiless. The only thing she could think of was that her 
father might, after all, come round; and she articulated, with an awkward 
sense of her helplessness in doing so, a wish that this miracle might 
happen. 
"Do you think it is in the least degree likely?" Morris asked. 
"It would be, if he could only know you." 
"He can know me if he will. What is to prevent it?"
"His ideas, his reasons," said Catherine. "They are so - so terribly 
strong." She trembled with the recollection of them yet. 
"Strong!" cried Morris. "I would rather you should think them weak." 
"Oh, nothing about my father is weak," said the girl. 
Morris turned away, walking to the window, where he stood looking out. "You 
are terribly afraid of him," he remarked at last. 
She felt no impulse to deny it, because she had no shame in it; for, if it 
was no honour to herself, at least it was an honour to him. "I suppose I 
must be," she said, simply. 
"Then you don't love me - not as I love you. If you fear your father more 
than you love me, then your love is not what I hoped it was." 
"Ah, my friend!" she said, going to him. 
"Do I fear anything?" he demanded, turning round on her. "For your sake 
what am I not ready to face?" 
"You are noble - you are brave!" she answered, stopping short at a distance 
that was almost respectful. 
"Small good it does me, if you are so timid." 
"I don't think I am - really," said Catherine. 
"I don't know what you mean by 'really.' It is really enough to make us 
miserable." 
"I should be strong enough to wait - to wait a long time." 
"And suppose after a long time your father should hate me worse than ever?
"He wouldn't - he couldn't." 
"He would be touched by my fidelity; is that what you mean? If he is so 
easily touched, then why should you be afraid of him?" 
This was much to the point, and Catherine was struck by it. "I will try not 
to be," she said. And she stood there submissively, the image, in advance, 
of a dutiful and responsible wife. This image could not fail to recommend 
itself to Morris Townsend, and he continued to give proof of the high 
estimation in which he held her. It could only have been at the prompting 
of such a sentiment that he presently mentioned to her that the course 
recommended by Mrs. Penniman was an immediate union, regardless of 
consequences. 
"Yes, Aunt Penniman would like that," Catherine said, simply, and yet with 
a certain shrewdness. It must, however, have been in pure simplicity, and 
from motives quite untouched by sarcasm, that a few moments after she went 
on to say to Morris that her father had given her a message for him. It was 
quite on her conscience to deliver this message, and had the mission been 
ten times more painful, she would have as scrupulously performed it. "He 
told me to tell you - to tell you very distinctly, and directly from 
himself - that if I marry without his consent, I shall not inherit a penny 
of his fortune. He made a great point of his. He seemed to think - he 
seemed to think -" 
Morris flushed, as any young man of spirit might have flushed at an 
imputation of baseness. "What did he seem to think?" 
"That it would make a difference." 
"It will make a difference - in many things. We shall be by many thousands 
of dollars the poorer; and that is a great difference. But it will make 
none in my affection." 
"We shall not want the money," said Catherine, "for you know I have a good 
deal myself." 
"Yes, my dear girl, I know you have something. And he can't touch that." 
"He would never," said Catherine. "My mother left it to me." 
Morris was silent awhile. "He was very positive about this, was he?" he 
asked at last. "He thought such a message would annoy me terribly, and make 
me throw off the mask, eh?"
"I don't know what he thought," said Catherine, sadly. 
"Please tell him that I care for his message as much as for that!" and 
Morris snapped his fingers sonorously 
"I don't think I could tell him that." 
"Do you know you sometimes disappoint me," said Morris. 
"I should think I might. I disappoint everyone - Father and Aunt Penniman." 
"Well, it doesn't matter with me, because I am fonder of you than they 
are."
"Yes, Morris," said the girl, with her imagination - what there was of it - 
swimming in this happy truth, which seemed, after all, invidious to no one. 
"Is it your belief that he will stick to it - stick to it forever - to this 
idea of disinheriting you? That your goodness and patience will never wear 
out his cruelty?"
"The trouble is that if I marry you he will think I am not good. He will 
think that a proof." 
"Ah, then he will never forgive you~" 
This idea, sharply expressed by Morris's handsome lips, renewed for a 
moment to the poor girl's temporarily pacified conscience all its dreadful 
vividness. "Oh, you must love me very much!" she cried. "There is no doubt 
of that, my dear," her lover rejoined. "You don't like that word 
'disinherited,' " he added, in a moment. 
"It isn't the money; it is that he should - that he should feel so." 
"I suppose it seems to you a kind of curse?" said Morris. "It must be very 
dismal. But don't you think," he went on, presently, "that if you were to - 
 to be very clever, and to set rightly about it, you might in the end 
conjure it away? Don't you think," he continued further, in a tone of 
sympathetic speculation, "that a really clever woman, in your place, might 
bring him round at last? Don't you think -" 
Here, suddenly, Morris was interrupted; these ingenious inquiries had not 
reached Catherine's ears. The terrible word disinheritance, with all its 
impressive moral reprobation, was still ringing there - seemed, indeed, to 
gather force as it lingered. The mortal chill of her situation struck more 
deeply into her childlike heart, and she was overwhelmed by a feeling of 
loneliness and danger. But her refuge was there, close to her, and she put 
out her hands to grasp it. "Ah, Morris," she said, with a shudder, "I will 
marry you as soon as you please!" and she surrendered herself, leaning her 
head on his shoulder. 
"My dear good girl!" he exclaimed, looking down at his prize. And then he 
looked up again, rather vaguely, with parted lips and lifted eyebrows.


Chapter 21

Doctor Sloper very soon imparted his conviction to Mrs. Almond in the same 
terms in which he had announced it to himself. "She's going to stick, by 
Jove! She's going to stick."
"Do you mean that she is going to marry him?" Mrs. Almond inquired. 
"I don't know that; but she is not going to break down. She is going to 
drag out the engagement, in the hope of making me relent." 
"And shall you not relent?" 
"Shall a geometrical proposition relent? I am not so superficial."
"Doesn't geometry treat of surfaces?" asked Mrs. Almond, who, as we know, 
was clever, smiling. 
"Yes, but it treats of them profoundly. Catherine and her young man are my 
surfaces; I have taken their measure." 
"You speak as if it surprised you." 
"It is immense; there will be a great deal to observe."
"You are shockingly cold-blooded!" said Mrs. Almond. 
"I need to be, with all this hot blood about me. Young Townsend, indeed, is 
cool; I must allow him that merit." 
"I can't judge him," Mrs. Almond answered, "but I am not at all surprised 
at Catherine." 
"I confess I am a little; she must have been so deucedly divided and 
bothered." 
"Say it amuses you outright. I don't see why it should be such a joke that 
your daughter adores you." 
"It is the point where the adoration stops that I find it interesting to 
find." 
"It stops where the other sentiment begins." 
"Not at all; that would be simple enough. The two things are extremely 
mixed up, and the mixture is extremely odd. It will produce some third 
element, and that's what I'm waiting to see. I wait with suspense - with 
positive excitement; and that is a sort of emotion that I didn't suppose 
Catherine would ever provide for me. I am really very much obliged to her." 
"She will cling," said Mrs. Almond. "She will certainly cling." 
"Yes, as I say, she will stick." 
"Cling is prettier. That's what those very simple natures always do, and 
nothing could be simpler than Catherine. She doesn't take many impressions; 
but when she takes one, she keeps it. She is like a copper kettle that 
receives a dent: You may polish up the kettle, but you can't efface the 
mark."
"We must try and polish up Catherine," said the doctor. "I will take her to 
Europe!" 
"She won't forget him in Europe." 
"He will forget her, then." 
Mrs. Almond looked grave. "Should you really like that?" 
"Extremely," said the doctor. 
Mrs. Penniman, meanwhile, lost little time in putting herself again in 
communication with Morris Townsend. She requested him to favour her with 
another interview, but she did not on this occasion select an oyster saloon 
as the scene of their meeting. She proposed that he should join her at the 
door of a certain church after service on Sunday afternoon; and she was 
careful not to appoint the place of worship which she usually visited, and 
where, as she said, the congregation would have spied upon her. She picked 
out a less elegant resort, and on issuing from its portal at the hour she 
had fixed she saw the young man standing apart. She offered him no 
recognition until she had crossed the street, and he had followed her to 
some distance. Here, with a smile, "Excuse my apparent want of cordiality," 
she said. "You know what to believe about that. Prudence before 
everything." And on his asking her in what direction they should walk, 
"Where we shall be least observed," she murmured.
Morris was not in high good-humour, and his response to this speech was not 
particularly gallant. "I don't flatter myself we shall be much observed 
anywhere." Then he turned recklessly toward the center of the town. "I hope 
you have come to tell me that he has knocked under," he went on. 
"I am afraid I am not altogether a harbinger of good; and yet, too, I am to 
a certain extent a messenger of peace. I have been thinking a great deal, 
Mr. Townsend," said Mrs. Penniman. 
"You think too much." 
"I suppose I do; but I can't help it, my mind is so terribly active. When I 
give myself, I give myself. I pay the penalty in my headaches, my famous 
headaches - a perfect circlet of pain! But I carry it as a queen carries 
her crown. Would you believe that I have one now? I wouldn't, however, have 
missed our rendezvous for anything. I have something very important to tell 
you." 
"Well, let's have it," said Morris. "I was perhaps a little headlong the 
other day in advising you to marry immediately. I have been thinking it 
over, and now I see it just a little differently." 
"You seem to have a great many different ways of seeing the same object." 
Their number is infinite!" said Mrs. Penniman, in a tone which seemed to 
suggest that this convenient faculty was one of her brightest attributes. 
"I recommend you to take one way, and stick to it," Morris replied. 
"Ah, but it isn't easy to choose. My imagination is never quiet, never 
satisfied. It makes me a bad adviser, perhaps, but it makes me a capital 
friend." 
"A capital friend who gives bad advice!" said Morris. 
"Not intentionally - and who hurries off, at every risk, to make the most 
humble excuses." 
"Well, what do you advise me now?" 
"To be very patient; to watch and wait." 
"And is that bad advice or good?" 
"That is not for me to say," Mrs. Penniman rejoined, with some dignity. "I 
only claim it is sincere." 
"And will you come to me next week and recommend something different and 
equally sincere?" 
"I may come to you next week, and tell you that I am in the streets." 
"In the streets?" 
"I have had a terrible scene with my brother, and he threatens, if anything 
happens, to turn me out of the house. You know I am a poor woman." 
Morris had a speculative idea that she had a little property; but he 
naturally did not press this. 
"I should be very sorry to see you suffer martyrdom for me," he said. "But 
you make your brother out a regular lurk." 
Mrs. Penniman hesitated a little. 
"I certainly do not regard Austin as an orthodox Christian." 
"And am I to wait till he is converted?"
"Wait at any rate till he is less violent. Bide your time, Mr. Townsend; 
remember the prize is great." 
Morris walked along some time in silence, tapping the railings and 
gateposts very sharply with his stick. "You certainly are devilish 
inconsistent!" he broke out at last. "I have already got Catherine to 
consent to a private marriage." 
Mrs. Penniman was indeed inconsistent, for at this news she gave a little 
jump of gratification. 
"Oh, when and where?" she cried. And then she stopped short. 
Morris was a little vague about this. 
"That isn't fixed; but she consents. It's deuced awkward now to back out." 
Mrs. Penniman, as I say, had stopped short; and she stood there with her 
eyes fixed brilliantly on her companion. 
"Mr. Townsend," she proceeded, "shall I tell you something. Catherine loves 
you so much that you may do anything." 
This declaration was slightly ambiguous, and Morris opened his eyes. 
"I am happy to hear it. But what do you mean by 'anything'?"
"You may postpone - you may change about; she won't think the worse of 
you." 
Morris stood there still, with his raised eyebrows; then he said, simply 
and rather dryly, "Ah!" After this he remarked to Mrs. Penniman that if she 
walked so slowly she would attract notice, and he succeeded, after a 
fashion, in hurrying her back to the domicile of which her tenure had 
become so insecure.


Chapter 22

He had slightly misrepresented the matter in saying that Catherine had 
consented to take the great step. We left her just now declaring that she 
would burn her ships behind her; but Morris, after having elicited this 
declaration, had become conscious of good reasons for not taking it up. He 
avoided, gracefully enough, fixing a day, though he left her under the 
impression that he had his eye on one. Catherine may have had her 
difficulties; but those of her circumspect suitor are also worthy of 
consideration. The prize was certainly great; but it was only to be won by 
striking the happy mean between precipitancy and caution. It would be all 
very well to take one's jump and trust to Providence; Providence was more 
especially on the side of clever people, and clever people were known by an 
indisposition to risk their bones. 
The ultimate reward of a union with a young woman who was both unattractive 
and impoverished ought to be connected with immediate disadvantages by some 
very palpable chain. Between the fear of losing Catherine and her possible 
fortune altogether, and the fear of taking her too soon and finding this 
possible fortune as void of actuality as a collection of emptied bottles, 
it was not comfortable for Morris Townsend to choose - a fact that should 
be remembered by readers disposed to judge harshly of a young man who may 
have struck them as making but an indifferently successful use of fine 
natural parts. He had not forgotten that in any event Catherine had her own 
ten thousand a year; he had devoted an abundance of meditation to this 
circumstance. But with his fine parts he rated himself high, and he had a 
perfectly definite appreciation of his value, which seemed to him 
inadequately represented by the sum I have mentioned. At the same time he 
reminded himself that this sum was considerable, that everything is 
relative, and that if a modest income is less desirable than a large one, 
the complete absence of revenue is nowhere accounted an advantage. 
These reflections gave him plenty of occupation, and made it necessary that 
he should trim his sail. Doctor Sloper's opposition was the unknown 
quantity in the problem he had to work out. The natural way to work it out 
was by marrying Catherine; but in mathematics there are many shortcuts, and 
Morris was not without a hope that he should yet discover one. When 
Catherine took him at his word, and consented to renounce the attempt to 
mollify her father, he drew back skilfully 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 honour, and from the moment she had brought herself to the point 
of violating her father's wish, it seemed to her that she had no right to 
enjoy his protection. It was on her conscience that she ought to live under 
his roof only so long as she conformed to his wisdom. There was a great 
deal of glory in such a position, but poor Catherine felt that she had 
forfeited her claim to it. She had cast her lot with a young man against 
whom he had solemnly warned her, and broken the contract under which he 
provided her with a happy home. She could not give up the young man, so she 
must leave the home; and the sooner the object of her preference offered 
her another, the sooner her situation would lose its awkward twist. This 
was close reasoning; but it was commingled with an infinite amount of 
merely instinctive penitence. Catherine's days, at this time, were dismal, 
and the weight of some of her hours was almost more than she could bear. 
Her father never looked at her, never spoke to her. He knew perfectly what 
he was about, and this was part of a plan. She looked at him as much as she 
dared (for she was afraid of seeming to offer herself to his observation), 
and she pitied him for the sorrow she had brought upon him. She held up her 
head and busied her hands, and went about her daily occupations; and when 
the state of things in Washington Square seemed intolerable, she closed her 
eyes and indulged herself with an intellectual vision of the man for whose 
sake she had broken a sacred law. 
Mrs. Penniman, of the three persons in Washington Square, had much the most 
of the manner that belongs to a great crisis. If Catherine was quiet, she 
was quietly quiet, as I may say, and her pathetic effects, which there was 
no one to notice, were entirely unstudied and unintended. If the doctor was 
stiff and dry, and absolutely indifferent to the presence of his 
companions, it was so lightly, neatly, easily done, that you would have had 
to know him well to discover that, on the whole, he rather enjoyed having 
to be so disagreeable. But Mrs. Penniman was elaborately reserved and 
significantly silent - there was a richer rustle in the very deliberate 
movements to which she confined herself, and when she occasionally spoke, 
in connection with some very trivial event, she had the air of meaning 
something deeper than what she said. Between Catherine and her father 
nothing had passed since the evening she went to speak to him in his study. 
She had something to say to him - it seemed to her she ought to say it - 
but she kept it back for fear of irritating him. He also had something to 
say to her; but he was determined not to speak first. He was interested, as 
we know, in seeing how, if she were left to herself, she would "stick." At 
last she told him she had seen Morris Townsend again, and that their 
relations remained quite the same. 
"I think we shall marry - before very long. And probably, meanwhile, I 
shall see him rather often; about once a week - not more." 
The doctor looked at her coldly from head to foot, as if she had been a 
stranger. It was the first time his eyes had rested on her for a week, 
which was fortunate, if that was to be their expression. "Why not three 
times a day?" he asked. "What prevents your meeting as often as you 
choose?" 
She turned away a moment; there were tears in her eyes. Then she said, "It 
is better once a week." 
"I don't see how it is better. It is as bad as it can be. If you flatter 
yourself that I care for little modifications of that sort, you are very 
much mistaken. It is as wrong of you to see him once a week as it would be 
to see him all day long. Not that it matters to me, however." 
Catherine tried to follow these words, but they seemed to lead toward a 
vague horror from which she recoiled. "I think we shall marry pretty soon," 
she repeated, at last. 
Her father gave her his dreadful look again, as if she were someone else. 
"Why do you tell me that? It's no concern of mine." 
"Oh, Father," she broke out, "don't you care, even if you do feel so?"
"Not a button. Once you marry, it's quite the same to me when, or where, or 
why you do it; and if you think to compound for your folly by hoisting your 
fly in this way, you may spare yourself the trouble." 
With this he turned away. But the next day he spoke to her of his own 
accord, and his manner was somewhat changed. "Shall you be married within 
the next four or five months?" he asked. 
"I don't know, Father," said Catherine. "It is not very easy for us to make 
up our minds."
"Put it off, then, for six months, and in the meantime I will take you to 
Europe. I should like you very much to go." 
It gave her such delight, after his words of the day before, to hear that 
he should "like" her to do something, and that he still had in his heart 
any of the tenderness of preference, that she gave a little exclamation of 
joy. But then she became conscious that Morris was not included in this 
proposal, and that - as regards really going - she would greatly prefer to 
remain at home with him. But she blushed none the less more comfortably 
than she had done of late. "It would be delightful to go to Europe," she 
remarked, with a sense that the idea was not original, and that her tone 
was not all it might be. 
"Very well, then, we will go. Pack up your clothes." 
"I had better tell Mr. Townsend," said Catherine. 
Her father fixed his cold eyes upon her. "If you mean that you had better 
ask his leave, all that remains to me is to hope he will give it." 
The girl was sharply touched by the pathetic ring of the words; it was the 
most calculated, the most dramatic little speech the doctor had ever 
uttered. She felt that it was a great thing for her, under the 
circumstances, to have this fine opportunity of showing him her respect; 
and yet there was something else that she felt as well, and that she 
presently expressed. "I sometimes think that if I do what you dislike so 
much, I ought not to stay with you." 
"To stay with me?" 
"If I live with you, I ought to obey you." 
"If that's your theory, it's certainly mine," said the doctor, with a dry 
laugh. 
"But if I don't obey you, I ought not to live with you - to enjoy your 
kindness and protection." 
This striking argument gave the doctor a sudden sense of having 
underestimated his daughter; it seemed even more than worthy of a young 
woman who had revealed the quality of unaggressive obstinacy. But it 
displeased him - displeased him deeply, and he signified as much. "That 
idea is in very bad taste," he said. "Did you get it from Mr. Townsend?" 
"Oh no; it's my own," said Catherine, eagerly. 
"Keep it to yourself, then," her father answered, more than ever determined 
she should go to Europe.


Chapter 23

If Morris Townsend was not to be included in this journey, no more was Mrs. 
Penniman, who would have been thankful for an invitation, but who (to do 
her justice) bore her disappointment in a perfectly ladylike manner. "I 
should enjoy seeing the works of Raphael and the ruins - the ruins of the 
Pantheon," she said to Mrs. Almond, "but, on the other hand, I shall not be 
sorry to be alone and at peace for the next few months in Washington 
Square. I want rest; I have been through so much in the last four months." 
Mrs. Almond thought it rather cruel that her brother should not take poor 
Lavinia abroad; but she easily understood that, if the purpose of his 
expedition was to make Catherine forget her lover, it was not in his 
interest to give his daughter this young man's best friend as a companion. 
"If Lavinia had not been so foolish, she might visit the ruins of the 
Pantheon," she said to herself; and she continued to regret her sister's 
folly, even though the latter assured her that she had often heard the 
relics in question most satisfactorily described by Mr. Penniman. Mrs. 
Penniman was perfectly aware that her brother's motive in undertaking a 
foreign tour was to lay a trap for Catherine's constancy; and she imparted 
this conviction very frankly to her niece.
"He thinks it will make you forget Morris," she said (she always called the 
young man "Morris" now). "Out of sight, out of mind, you know. He thinks 
that all the things you will see over there will drive him out of your 
thoughts."
Catherine looked greatly alarmed. "If he thinks that, I ought to tell him 
beforehand."
Mrs. Penniman shook her head. "Tell him afterward, my dear - after he has 
had all the trouble and expense. That's the way to serve him." And she 
added, in a softer key, that it must be delightful to think of those who 
love us among the ruins of the Pantheon.
Her father's displeasure had cost the girl, as we know, a great deal of 
deep-welling sorrow - sorrow of the purest and most generous kind, without 
a touch of resentment or rancour; but for the first time, after he had 
dismissed with such contemptuous brevity her apology for being a charge 
upon him, there was a spark of anger in her grief. She had felt his 
contempt; it had scorched her; that speech about her bad taste had made her 
ears burn for three days. During this period she was less considerate; she 
had an idea - a rather vague one, but it was agreeable to her sense of 
injury - that now she was absolved from penance, and might do what she 
chose. She chose to write to Morris Townsend to meet her in the Square and 
take her to walk about the town. If she were going to Europe out of respect 
to her father, she might at least give herself this satisfaction. She felt 
in every way at present more free and more resolute; there was a force that 
urged her. Now at last, completely and unreservedly, her passion possessed 
her.
Morris met her at last, and they took a long walk. She told him immediately 
what had happened; that her father wished to take her away - it would be 
for six months - to Europe; she would do absolutely what Morris should 
think best. She hoped inexpressibly that he would think it best she should 
stay at home. It was some time before he said what he thought; he asked, as 
they walked along, a great many questions. There was one that especially 
struck her; it seemed so
"Should you like to see all those celebrated things over there?"
"Oh no, Morris!" said Catherine, quite deprecatingly.
"Gracious heaven, what a dull woman!" Morris exclaimed to himself.
"He thinks I will forget you," said Catherine, "that all these things will 
drive you out of my mind."
"Well, my dear, perhaps they will."
"Please don't say that," Catherine answered, gently, as they walked along. 
"Poor Father will be disappointed."
Morris gave a little laugh. "Yes, I verily believe that your poor father 
will be disappointed. But you will have seen Europe," he added, humorously. 
"What a take in!"
"I don't care for seeing Europe," Catherine said.
"You ought to care, my dear; and it may mollify your father."
Catherine, conscious of her obstinacy, expected little of this, and could 
not rid herself of the idea that in going abroad and yet remaining firm, 
she should play her father a trick. "Don't you think it would be a kind of 
deception?" she asked.
"Doesn't he want to deceive you?" cried Morris. "It will serve him right. I 
really think you had better go."
"And not be married for so long?"
"Be married when you come back. You can buy your wedding clothes in Paris." 
And then Morris, with great kindness of tone, explained his view of the 
matter. It would be a good thing that she should go; it would put them 
completely in the right. It would show they were reasonable, and willing to 
wait. Once they were so sure of each other, they could afford to wait - 
what had they to fear? If there was a particle of chance that her father 
would be favourably 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 
humanising influence. He might be touched by her gentleness, her patience, 
her willingness to make any sacrifice but that one; and if she should 
appeal to him someday, in some celebrated spot - in Italy, say, in the 
evening; in Venice, in a gondola, by moonlight - if she should be a little 
clever about it, and touch the right chord, perhaps he would fold her in 
his arms, and tell her that he forgave her. Catherine was immensely struck 
with this conception of the affair, which seemed eminently worthy of her 
lover's brilliant intellect, though she viewed it askance in so far as it 
depended upon her own powers of execution. The idea of being "clever" in a 
gondola by moonlight appeared to her to involve elements of which her grasp 
was not active. But it was settled between them that she should tell her 
father that she was ready to follow him obediently anywhere, making the 
mental reservation that she loved Morris Townsend more than ever.
She informed the doctor she was ready to embark, and he made rapid 
arrangements for this event. Catherine had many farewells to make, but with 
only two of them are we actively concerned. Mrs. Penniman took a 
discriminating view of her niece's journey; it seemed to her very proper 
that Mr. Townsend's destined bride should wish to embellish her mind by a 
foreign tour.
"You leave him in good hands," she said, pressing her lips to Catherine's 
forehead. (She was very fond of kissing people's foreheads; it was an 
involuntary expression of sympathy with the intellectual part.) "I shall 
see him often; I shall feel like one of the vestals of old tending the 
sacred flame."
"You behave beautifully about not going with us," Catherine answered, not 
presuming to examine this analogy.
"It is my pride that keeps me up," said Mrs. Penniman, tapping the body of 
her dress, which always gave forth a sort of metallic ring.
Catherine's parting with her lover was short, and few words were exchanged.
"Shall I find you just the same when I come back?" she asked; though the 
question was not the fruit of scepticism.
"The same - only more so," said Morris, smiling.
It does not enter into our scheme to narrate in detail Doctor Sloper's 
proceedings in the Eastern Hemisphere. He made the grand tour of Europe, 
travelled in considerable splendour, 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 parlour (when the great mahogany 
sliding doors, with silver knobs and hinges, which divided this apartment 
from its more formal neighbour, were closed), and he used to smoke cigars 
in the doctor's study, where he often spent an hour in turning over the 
curious collections of its absent proprietor. He thought Mrs. Penniman a 
goose, as we know; but he was no goose himself, and, as a young man of 
luxurious tastes and scanty resources, he found the house a perfect castle 
of indolence. It became for him a club with a single member. Mrs. Penniman 
saw much less of her sister than while the doctor was at home; for Mrs. 
Almond had felt moved to tell her that she disapproved of her relations 
with Mr. Townsend. She had no business to be so friendly to a young man of 
whom their brother thought so meanly, and Mrs. Almond was surprised at her 
levity in foisting a most deplorable engagement upon Catherine.
"Deplorable!" cried Lavinia. "He will make her a lovely husband."
"I don't believe in lovely husbands," said Mrs. Almond. "I only believe in 
good ones. If he marries her, and she comes into Austin's money, they may 
get on. He will be an idle, amiable, selfish, and, doubtless, tolerably 
good-natured fellow. But if she doesn't get the money, and he finds himself 
tied to her, heaven have mercy on her! He will have none. He will hate her 
for his disappointment, and take his revenge; he will be pitiless and 
cruel. Woe betide poor Catherine! I recommend you to talk a little with his 
sister; it's a pity Catherine can't marry her!"
Mrs. Penniman had no appetite whatever for conversation with Mrs. 
Montgomery, whose acquaintance she made no trouble to cultivate; and the 
effect of this alarming forecast of her niece's destiny was to make her 
think it indeed a thousand pities that Mr. Townsend's generous nature 
should be embittered. Bright enjoyment was his natural element, and how 
could he be comfortable if there should prove to be nothing to enjoy? It 
became a fixed idea with Mrs. Penniman that he should yet enjoy her 
brother's fortune, on which she had acuteness enough to perceive that her 
own claim was small.
"If he doesn't leave it to Catherine, it certainly won't be to leave it to 
me," she said.



Chapter 24

The Doctor, during the first six months he was abroad, never spoke to his 
daughter of their little difference, partly on system, and partly because 
he had a great many other things to think about. It was idle to attempt to 
ascertain the state of her affections without direct inquiry, because if 
she had not had an expressive manner among the familiar influences of home, 
she failed to gather animation from the mountains of Switzerland or the 
monuments of Italy. She was always her father's docile and reasonable 
associate - going through their sight-seeing in deferential silence, never 
complaining of fatigue, always ready to start at the hour he had appointed 
overnight, making no foolish criticisms, and indulging in no refinements of 
appreciation. "She is about as intelligent as the bundle of shawls," the 
doctor said, her main superiority being that, while the bundle of shawls 
sometimes got lost, or tumbled out of the carriage, Catherine was always at 
her post, and had a firm and ample seat. But her father had expected this, 
and he was not constrained to set down her intellectual limitations as a 
tourist to sentimental depression; she had completely divested herself of 
the characteristics of a victim, and during the whole time that they were 
abroad she never uttered an audible sigh. He supposed she was in 
correspondence with Morris Townsend, but he held his peace about it, for he 
never saw the young man's letters, and Catherine's own missives were always 
given to the courier to post. She heard from her lover with considerable 
regularity, but his letters came enclosed in Mrs. Penniman's; so that, 
whenever the doctor handed her a packet addressed in his sister's hand, he 
was an involuntary instrument of the passion he condemned. Catherine made 
this reflection, and six months earlier she would have felt bound to give 
him warning; but now she deemed herself absolved. There was a sore spot in 
her heart that his own words had made when once she spoke to him as she 
thought honour 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 travellers found themselves in a 
lonely valley of the Alps. They were crossing one of the passes, and on the 
long ascent they had got out of the carriage and had wandered much in 
advance. After awhile the doctor descried a footpath which, leading through 
a transverse valley, would bring them out, as he justly supposed, at a much 
higher point of the ascent. They followed this devious way, and finally 
lost the path; the valley proved very wild and rough, and their walk became 
rather a scramble. They were good walkers, however, and they took their 
adventure easily; from time to time they stopped, that Catherine might 
rest; and then she sat upon a stone and looked about her at the hard-
featured rocks and the glowing sky. It was late in the afternoon, in the 
last of August; night was coming on, and as they had reached a great 
elevation, the air was cold and sharp. In the west there was a great 
suffusion of cold red light, which made the sides of the little valley look 
only the more rugged and dusky. During one of their pauses her father left 
her and wandered away to some high place, at a distance, to get a view. He 
was out of sight; she sat there alone in the stillness, which was just 
touched by the vague murmur somewhere of a mountain brook. She thought of 
Morris Townsend, and the place was so desolate and lonely that he seemed 
very far away. Her father remained absent a long time; she began to wonder 
what had become of him. But at last he reappeared, coming toward her in the 
clear twilight, and she got up to go on. He made no motion to proceed, 
however, but came close to her, as if he had something to say. He stopped 
in front of her, and stood looking at her with eyes that had kept the light 
of the flushing snow-summits on which they had just been fixed. Then, 
abruptly, in a low tone, he asked her an unexpected question, "Have you 
given him up?"
The question was unexpected, but Catherine was only superficially 
unprepared.
"No, Father," she answered.
He looked at her again for some moments without speaking.
"Does he write to you?" he asked.
"Yes, about twice a month."
The doctor looked up and down the valley, swinging his stick; then he said 
to her, in the same low tone, "I am very angry."
She wondered what he meant - whether he wished to frighten her. If he did, 
the place was well chosen: This hard, melancholy dell, abandoned by the 
summer light, made her feel her loneliness. She looked around her, and her 
heart grew cold; for a moment her fear was great. But she could think of 
nothing to say, save to murmur, gently, "I am sorry."
"You try my patience," her father went on, "and you ought to know what I 
am. I am not a very good man. Though I am very smooth externally, at bottom 
I am very passionate; and I assure you I can be very hard."
She could not think why he told her these things. Had he brought her there 
on purpose, and was it part of a plan? What was the plan? Catherine asked 
herself. Was it to startle her suddenly into a retraction - to take an 
advantage of her by dread? Dread of what? The place was ugly and lonely, 
but the place could do her no harm. There was a kind of still intensity 
about her father which made him dangerous, but Catherine hardly went so far 
as to say to herself that it might be part of his plan to fasten his hand - 
the neat, fine, supple hand of a distinguished physician - in her throat. 
Nevertheless, she receded a step. "I am sure you can be anything you 
please," she said; and it was her simple belief.
"I am very angry," he replied, more sharply.
"Why has it taken you so suddenly?"
"It has not taken me suddenly. I have been raging inwardly for the last six 
months. But just now this seemed a good place to flare out. It's so quiet, 
and we are alone."
"Yes, it's very quiet," said Catherine, vaguely looking about her. "Won't 
you come back to the carriage?"
"In a moment. Do you mean that in all this time you have not yielded an 
inch?"
"I would if I could, Father; but I can't."
The doctor looked round him too. "Should you like to be left in such a 
place as this, to starve?"
"What do you mean?" cried the girl.
"That will be your fate - that's how he will leave you."
He would not touch her, but he had touched Morris. The warmth came back to 
her heart. "That is not true, Father," she broke out, "and you ought not to 
say it. It is not right, and it's not true."
He shook his head slowly. "No, it's not right, because you won't believe 
it. But it is true. Come back to the carriage."
He turned away, and she followed him; he went faster, and was presently 
much in advance. But from time to time he stopped, without turning round, 
to let her keep up with him, and she made her way forward with difficulty, 
her heart beating with the excitement of having for the first time spoken 
to him in violence. By this time it had grown almost dark, and she ended by 
losing sight of him. But she kept her course, and after a little, the 
valley making a sudden turn, she gained the road, where the carriage stood 
waiting. In it sat her father, rigid and silent; in silence, too, she took 
her place beside him.
It seemed to her, later, in looking back upon all this, that for days 
afterward not a word had been exchanged between them. The scene had been a 
strange one, but it had not permanently affected her feeling toward her 
father, for it was natural, after all, that he should occasionally make a 
scene of some kind, and he had let her alone for six months. The strangest 
part of it was that he had said he was not a good man; Catherine wondered a 
good deal what he had meant by that. The statement failed to appeal to her 
credence, and it was not grateful to any resentment that she entertained. 
Even in the utmost bitterness that she might feel, it would give her no 
satisfaction to think him less complete. Such a saying as that was a part 
of his great subtlety - men so clever as he might say anything and mean 
anything; and as to his being hard, that surely, in a man, was a virtue.
He let her alone for six months more - six months during which she 
accommodated herself without a protest to the extension of their tour. But 
he spoke again at the end of this time: It was at the very last, the night 
before they embarked for New York, in the hotel at Liverpool. They had been 
dining together in a great, dim, musty sitting room; and then the cloth had 
been removed, and the doctor walked slowly up and down. Catherine at last 
took her candle to go to bed, but her father motioned her to stay.
"What do you mean to do when you get home?" he asked, while she stood there 
with her candle in her hand.
"Do you mean about Mr. Townsend?"
"About Mr. Townsend."
"We shall probably marry."
The doctor took several turns again while she waited. "Do you hear from him 
as much as ever?"
"Yes, twice a month," said Catherine, promptly.
"And does he always talk about marriage?"
"Oh yes; that is, he talks about other things too, but he always says 
something about that."
"I am glad to hear he varies his subjects; his letters might otherwise be 
monotonous."
"He writes beautifully," said Catherine, who was very glad of a chance to 
say it.
"They always write beautifully. However, in a given case that doesn't 
diminish the merit. So, as soon as you arrive, you are going off with him?"
This seemed a rather gross way of putting it, and something that there was 
of dignity in Catherine resented it. "I cannot tell you till we arrive," 
she said.
"That's reasonable enough," her father answered. "That's all I ask of you - 
that you do tell me, that you give me definite notice. When a poor man is 
to lose his only child, he likes to have an inkling of it beforehand."
"Oh, Father, you will not lose me," Catherine said, spilling her candle 
wax.
"Three days before will do," he went on, "if you are in a position to be 
positive then. He ought to be very thankful to me, do you know. I have done 
a mighty good thing for him in taking you abroad; your value is twice as 
great, with all the knowledge and taste that you have acquired. A year ago, 
you were perhaps a little limited - a little rustic; but now you have seen 
everything, and appreciated everything, and you will be a most entertaining 
companion. We have fattened the sheep for him before he kills it." 
Catherine turned away, and stood staring at the blank door. "Go to bed," 
said her father, "and as we don't go aboard till noon, you may sleep late. 
We shall probably have a most uncomfortable voyage."



Chapter 25

The voyage was indeed uncomfortable, and Catherine, on arriving in New 
York, had not the compensation of "going off," in her father's phrase, with 
Morris Townsend. She saw him, however, the day after she landed; and in the 
meantime he formed a natural subject of conversation between our heroine 
and her aunt Lavinia, with whom, the night she disembarked, the girl was 
closeted for a long time before either lady retired to rest.
"I have seen a great deal of him," said Mrs. Penniman. "He is not very easy 
to know. I suppose you think you know him; but you don't, my dear. You will 
someday; but it will only be after you have lived with him. I may almost 
say I have lived with him," Mrs. Penniman proceeded, while Catherine 
stared. "I think I know him now; I have had such remarkable opportunities. 
You will have the same - or, rather, you will have better," and Aunt 
Lavinia smiled. "Then you will see what I mean. It's a wonderful character, 
full of passion and energy, and just as true."
Catherine listened with a mixture of interest and apprehension. Aunt 
Lavinia was intensely sympathetic, and Catherine, for the past year, while 
she wandered through foreign galleries and churches, and rolled over the 
smoothness of posting roads, nursing the thoughts that never passed her 
lips, had often longed for the company of some intelligent person of her 
own sex. To tell her story to some kind woman - at moments it seemed to her 
that this would give her comfort, and she had more than once been on the 
point of taking the landlady, or the nice young person from the 
dressmaker's, into her confidence. If a woman had been near her, she would 
on certain occasions have treated such a companion to a fit of weeping; and 
she had an apprehension that, on her return, this would form her response 
to Aunt Lavinia's first embrace. In fact, however, the two ladies had met, 
in Washington Square, without tears; and when they found themselves alone 
together a certain dryness fell upon the girl's emotion. It came over her 
with a greater force that Mrs. Penniman had enjoyed a whole year of her 
lover's society, and it was not a pleasure to her to hear her aunt explain 
and interpret the young man, speaking of him as if her own knowledge of him 
were supreme. It was not that Catherine was jealous; but her sense of Mrs. 
Penniman's innocent falsity, which had lain dormant, began to haunt her 
again, and she was glad that she was safely at home. With this, however, it 
was a blessing to be able to talk of Morris, to sound his name, to be with 
a person who was not unjust to him.
"You have been very kind to him," said Catherine. "He has written me that, 
often. I shall never forget that, Aunt Lavinia."
"I have done what I could; it has been very little. To let him come and 
talk to me, and give him his cup of tea - that was all. Your aunt Almond 
thought it was too much, and used to scold me terribly; but she promised 
me, at least, not to betray me."
"To betray you?"
"Not to tell your father. He used to sit in your father's study," said Mrs. 
Penniman, with a little laugh.
Catherine was silent a moment. This idea was disagreeable to her, and she 
was reminded again, with pain, of her aunt's secretive habits. Morris, the 
reader may be informed, had had the tact not to tell her that he sat in her 
father's study. He had known her but for a few months, and her aunt had 
known her for fifteen years; and yet he would not have made the mistake of 
thinking that Catherine would see the joke of the thing. "I am sorry you 
made him go into Father's room," she said, after awhile.
"I didn't send him; he went himself. He liked to look at the books, and at 
all those things in the glass cases. He knows all about them; he knows all 
about everything."
Catherine was silent again; then, "I wish he had found some employment," 
she said.
"He has found some employment. It's beautiful news, and he told me to tell 
you as soon as you arrived. He has gone into partnership with a commission 
merchant. It was all settled, quite suddenly, a week ago."
This seemed to Catherine indeed beautiful news; it had a fine prosperous 
air. "Oh, I'm so glad!" she said; and now, for a moment, she was disposed 
to throw herself on Aunt Lavinia's neck.
"It's much better than being under someone; and he has never been used to 
that," Mrs. Penniman went on. "He is just as good as his partner - they are 
perfectly equal. You see how right he was to wait. I should like to know 
what your father can say now! They have got an office in Duane Street, and 
little printed cards; he brought me one to show me. I have got it in my 
room, and you shall see it tomorrow. That's what he said to me the last 
time he was here, 'You see how right I was to wait.' He has got other 
people under him instead of being a subordinate. He could never be a 
subordinate; I have often told him I could never think of him in that way."
Catherine assented to this proposition, and was very happy to know that 
Morris was his own master; but she was deprived of the satisfaction of 
thinking that she might communicate this news in triumph to her father. Her 
father would care equally little whether Morris were established in 
business or transported for life. Her trunks had been brought into her 
room, and further reference to her lover was for a short time suspended, 
while she opened them and displayed to her aunt some of the spoils of 
foreign travel. These were rich and abundant; and Catherine had brought 
home a present to everyone - to everyone save Morris, to whom she had 
brought simply her undiverted heart. To Mrs. Penniman she had been lavishly 
generous, and Aunt Lavinia spent half an hour in unfolding and folding 
again, with little ejaculations of gratitude and taste. She marched about 
for some time in a splendid cashmere shawl, which Catherine had begged her 
to accept, settling it on her shoulders, and twisting down her head to see 
how low the point descended behind.
"I shall regard it only as a loan," she said. "I will leave it to you again 
when I die; or, rather," she added, kissing her niece again, "I will leave 
it to your firstborn little girl." And draped in her shawl, she stood there 
smiling.
"You had better wait till she comes," said Catherine.
"I don't like the way you say that," Mrs. Penniman rejoined, in a moment. 
"Catherine, are you changed?"
"No; I am the same."
"You have not swerved a line?"
"I am exactly the same," Catherine repeated, wishing her aunt were a little 
less sympathetic.
"Well, I am glad," and Mrs. Penniman surveyed her cashmere in the glass. 
Then, "How is your father?" she asked, in a moment, with her eyes on her 
niece. "Your letters were so meagre - I could never tell."
"Father is very well."
"Ah, you know what I mean," said Mrs. Penniman, with a dignity to which the 
cashmere gave a richer effect. "Is he still implacable?"
"Oh, yes!"
"Quite unchanged?"
"He is, if possible, more firm."
Mrs. Penniman took off her great shawl, and slowly folded it up. "That is 
very bad. You had no success with your little project?"
"What little project?"
"Morris told me all about it. The idea of turning the tables on him, in 
Europe; of watching him, when he was agreeably impressed by some celebrated 
sight - he pretends to be so artistic, you know - and then just pleading 
with him and bringing him round."
"I never tried it. It was Morris's idea; but if he had been with us in 
Europe, he would have seen that Father was never impressed in that way. He 
is artistic - tremendously artistic; but the more celebrated places we 
visited, and the more he admired them, the less use it would have been to 
plead with him. They seemed only to make him more determined - more 
terrible," said poor Catherine. "I shall never bring him round, and I 
expect nothing now."
"Well, I must say," Mrs. Penniman answered, "I never supposed you were 
going to give it up."
"I have given it up. I don't care now."
"You have grown very brave," said Mrs. Penniman, with a short laugh. "I 
didn't advise you to sacrifice your property."
"Yes, I am braver than I was. You asked me if I had changed; I have changed 
in that way. Oh," the girl went on, "I have changed very much. And it isn't 
my property. If he doesn't care for it, why should I?"
Mrs. Penniman hesitated. "Perhaps he does care for it."
"He cares for it for my sake, because he doesn't want to injure me. But he 
will know - he knows already - how little he need be afraid about that. 
Besides," said Catherine, "I have got plenty of money of my own. We shall 
be very well off; and now hasn't he got his business? I am delighted about 
that business." She went on talking, showing a good deal of excitement as 
she proceeded. Her aunt had never seen her with just this manner, and Mrs. 
Penniman, observing her, set it down to foreign travel, which had made her 
more positive, more mature. She thought also that Catherine had improved in 
appearance; she looked rather handsome. Mrs. Penniman wondered whether 
Morris Townsend would be struck with that. While she was engaged in this 
speculation, Catherine broke out, with a certain sharpness, "Why are you so 
contradictory, Aunt Penniman? You seem to think one thing at one time, and 
another at another. A year ago, before I went away, you wished me not to 
mind about displeasing Father, and now you seem to recommend me to take 
another line. You change about so."
This attack was unexpected, for Mrs. Penniman was not used, in any 
discussion, to seeing the war carried into her own country - possibly 
because the enemy generally had doubts of finding subsistence there. To her 
own consciousness, the flowery fields of her reason had rarely been ravaged 
by a hostile force. It was perhaps on this account that in defending them 
she was majestic rather than agile.
"I don't know what you accuse me of, save of being too deeply interested in 
your happiness. It is the first time I have been told I am capricious. That 
fault is not what I am usually reproached with."
"You were angry last year that I wouldn't marry immediately, and now you 
talk about my winning my father over. You told me it would serve him right 
if he should take me to Europe for nothing. Well, he has taken me for 
nothing, and you ought to be satisfied. Nothing is changed - nothing but my 
feeling about Father. I don't mind nearly so much now. I have been as good 
as I could, but he doesn't care. Now I don't care either. I don't know 
whether I have grown bad; perhaps I have. But I don't care for that. I have 
come home to be married - that's all I know. That ought to please you, 
unless you have taken up some new idea; you are so strange. You may do as 
you please, but you must never speak to me again about pleading with 
Father. I shall never plead with him for anything; that is all over. He has 
put me off. I am come home to be married."
This was a more authoritative speech than she had ever heard on her niece's 
lips, and Mrs. Penniman was proportionately startled. She was, indeed, a 
little awe-struck, and the force of the girl's emotion and resolution left 
her nothing to reply. She was easily frightened, and she always carried off 
her discomfiture by a concession - a concession which was often 
accompanied, as in the present case, by a little nervous laugh.



Chapter 26

If she had disturbed her niece's temper - she began from this moment 
forward to talk a good deal about Catherine's temper, an article which up 
to that time had never been mentioned in connection with our heroine - 
Catherine had opportunity on the morrow to recover her serenity. Mrs. 
Penniman had given her a message from Morris Townsend to the effect that he 
would come and welcome her home on the day after her arrival. He came in 
the afternoon; but, as may be imagined, he was not on this occasion made 
free of Doctor Sloper's study. He had been coming and going, for the past 
year, so comfortably and irresponsibly, that he had a certain sense of 
being wronged by finding himself reminded that he must now limit his 
horizon to the front parlour, which was Catherine's particular province.
"I am very glad you have come back," he said. "It makes me very happy to 
see you again." And he looked at her, smiling, from head to foot, though it 
did not appear afterward that he agreed with Mrs. Penniman, who, womanlike, 
went more into details, in thinking her embellished.
To Catherine he appeared resplendent; it was some time before she could 
believe again that this beautiful young man was her own exclusive property. 
They had a great deal of characteristic lovers' talk - a soft exchange of 
inquiries and assurances. In these matters Morris had an excellent grace, 
which flung a picturesque interest even over the account of his debut in 
the commission business - a subject as to which his companion earnestly 
questioned him. From time to time he got up from the sofa where they sat 
together, and walked about the room; after which he came back, smiling and 
passing his hand through his hair. He was unquiet, as was natural in a 
young man who has just been reunited to a long-absent mistress, and 
Catherine made the reflection that she had never seen him so excited. It 
gave her pleasure, somehow, to note this fact. He asked her questions about 
her travels, to some of which she was unable to reply, for she had 
forgotten the names of places and the order of her father's journey. But 
for the moment she was so happy, so lifted up by the belief that her 
troubles at last were over, that she forgot to be ashamed of her meagre 
answers. It seemed to her now that she could marry him without the remnant 
of a scruple, or a single tremor save those that belonged to joy. Without 
waiting for him to ask, she told him that her father had come back in 
exactly the same state of mind - that he had not yielded an inch.
"We must not expect it now," she said, "and we must do without it."
Morris sat looking and smiling. "My poor, dear girl!" he exclaimed.
"You mustn't pity me," said Catherine. "I don't mind it now; I am used to 
it."
Morris continued to smile, and then he got up and walked about again. "You 
had better let me try him."
"Try to bring him over? You would only make him worse," Catherine answered, 
resolutely.
"You say that because I managed it so badly before. But I should manage it 
differently now. I am much wiser; I have had a year to think of it. I have 
more tact."
"Is that what you have been thinking of for a year?"
"Much of the time. You see, the idea sticks in my crop. I don't like to be 
beaten."
"How are you beaten if we marry?"
"Of course I am not beaten on the main issue; but I am, don't you see, on 
all the rest of it - on the question of my reputation, of my relations with 
your father, of my relations with my own children, if we should have any."
"We shall have enough for our children; we shall have enough for 
everything. Don't you expect to succeed in business?"
"Brilliantly, and we shall certainly be very comfortable. But it isn't of 
the mere material comfort I speak; it is of the moral comfort," said 
Morris, "of the intellectual satisfaction."
"I have great moral comfort now," Catherine declared, very simply.
"Of course you have. But with me it is different. I have staked my pride on 
proving to your father that he is wrong, and now that I am at the head of a 
flourishing business, I can deal with him as an equal, I have a capital 
plan - do let me go at him!"
He stood before her with his bright face, his jaunty air, his hands in his 
pockets; and she got up, with her eyes resting on his own. "Please don't, 
Morris; please don't," she said; and there was a certain mild, sad firmness 
in her tone which he heard for the first time. "We must ask no favours of 
him - we must ask nothing more. He won't relent, and nothing good will come 
of it. I know it now - I have a very good reason."
"And pray what is your reason?"
She hesitated to bring it out, but at last it came. "He is not very fond of 
me."
"Oh, bother!" cried Morris, angrily.
"I wouldn't say such a thing without being sure. I saw it, I felt it, in 
England, just before he came away. He talked to me one night - the last 
night - and then it came over me. You can tell when a person feels that 
way. I wouldn't accuse him if he hadn't made me feel that way. I don't 
accuse him; I just tell you that that's how it is. He can't help it; we 
can't govern our affections. Do I govern mine? Mightn't he say that to me? 
It's because he is so fond of my mother, whom we lost so long ago. She was 
beautiful, and very, very brilliant; he is always thinking of her. I am not 
at all like her; Aunt Penniman has told me that. Of course it isn't my 
fault; but neither is it his fault. All I mean is, it's true; and it's a 
stronger reason, for his never being reconciled than simply his dislike for 
you."
"Simply'?" cried Morris, with a laugh. "I am much obliged for that."
"I don't mind about his disliking you now; I mind everything less. I feel 
differently; I feel separated from my father."
"Upon my word," said Morris, "you are a queer family."
"Don't say that - don't say anything unkind," the girl entreated. "You must 
be very kind to me now, because, Morris, because" - and she hesitated a 
moment - "because I have done a great deal for you."
"Oh, I know that, my dear."
She had spoken up to this moment without vehemence or outward sign of 
emotion, gently, reasoningly, only trying to explain. But her emotion had 
been ineffectually smothered, and it betrayed itself at last in the 
trembling of her voice. "It is a great thing to be separated like that from 
your father, when you have worshipped him before. It has made me very 
unhappy; or it would have made me so if I didn't love you. You can tell 
when a person speaks to you as if - as if-"
"As if what?"
"As if they despised you!" said Catherine, passionately. "He spoke that way 
the night before we sailed. It wasn't much, but it was enough, and I 
thought of it on the voyage all the time. Then I made up my mind. I will 
never ask him for anything again, or expect anything from him. It would not 
be natural now. We must be very happy together, and we must not seem to 
depend upon his forgiveness. And, Morris, Morris, you must never despise 
me!"
This was an easy promise to make, and Morris made it with fine effect. But 
for the moment he undertook nothing more onerous.



Chapter 27

The Doctor of course, on his return, had a good deal of talk with his 
sisters. He was at no great pains to narrate his travels or to communicate 
his impressions of distant lands to Mrs. Penniman, upon whom he contented 
himself with bestowing a memento of his enviable experience in the shape of 
a velvet gown. But he conversed with her at some length about matters 
nearer home, and lost no time in assuring her that he was still an 
inflexible father.
"I have no doubt you have seen a great deal of Mr. Townsend, and done your 
best to console him for Catherine's absence," he said. "I don't ask you and 
you needn't deny it. I wouldn't put the question to you for the world, and 
expose you to the inconvenience of having to - a - excogitate an answer. No 
one has betrayed you, and there has been no spy upon your proceedings. 
Elizabeth has told no tales, and has never mentioned you except to praise 
your good looks and good spirits. The thing is simply an inference of my 
own - an induction, as the philosophers say. It seems to me likely that you 
would have offered an asylum to an interesting sufferer. Mr. Townsend has 
been a good deal in the house; there is something in the house that tells 
me so. We doctors, you know, end by acquiring fine perceptions, and it is 
impressed upon my sensorium that he has sat in these chairs, in a very easy 
attitude, and warmed himself at that fire. I don't grudge him the comfort 
of it; it is the only one he will ever enjoy at my expense. It seems 
likely, indeed, that I shall be able to economise at his own. I don't know 
what you may have said to him, or what you may say hereafter; but I should 
like you to know that if you have encouraged him to believe that he will 
gain anything by hanging on, or that I have budged a hairbreadth from the 
position I took up a year ago, you have played him a trick for which he may 
exact reparation. I'm not sure that he may not bring a suit against you. Of 
course you have done it conscientiously; you have made yourself believe 
that I can be tired out. This is the most baseless hallucination that ever 
visited the brain of a genial optimist. I am not in the least tired; I am 
as fresh as when I started; I am good for fifty years yet. Catherine 
appears not to have budged an inch either; she is equally fresh; so we are 
about where we were before. This, however, you know as well as I. What I 
wish is simply to give you notice of my own state of mind. Take it to 
heart, dear Lavinia. Beware of the just resentment of a deluded fortune 
hunter!"
"I can't say I expected it," said Mrs. Penniman. "And I had a sort of 
foolish hope that you would come home without that odious ironical tone 
with which you treat the most sacred subjects."
"Don't undervalue irony; it is often of great use. It is not, however, 
always necessary, and I will show you how gracefully I can lay it aside. I 
should like to know whether you think Morris Townsend will hang on?"
"I will answer you with your own weapons," said Mrs. Penniman. "You had 
better wait and see."
"Do you call such a speech as that one of my own weapons? I never said 
anything so rough."
"He will hang on long enough to make you very uncomfortable, then."
"My dear Lavinia," exclaimed the doctor, "do you call that irony? I call it 
pugilism."
Mrs. Penniman, however, in spite of her pugilism, was a good deal 
frightened, and she took counsel of her fears. Her brother meanwhile took 
counsel, with many reservations, of Mrs. Almond, to whom he was no less 
generous than to Lavinia, and a good deal more communicative.
"I suppose she has had him there all the while," he said. "I must look into 
the state of my wine. You needn't mind telling me now; I have already said 
all I mean to say to her on the subject."
"I believe he was in the house a good deal," Mrs. Almond answered. "But you 
must admit that your leaving Lavinia quite alone was a great change for 
her, and that it was natural she should want some society."
"I do admit that, and that is why I shall make no row about the wine; I 
shall set it down as compensation to Lavinia. She is capable of telling me 
that she drank it all herself. Think of the inconceivable bad taste, in the 
circumstances, of that fellow making free with the house - or coming there 
at all! If that doesn't describe him, he is indescribable."
"His plan is to get what he can. Lavinia will have supported him a year," 
said Mrs. Almond. "It's so much gained."
"She will have to support him for the rest of his life, then," cried the 
doctor, "but without wine, as they say at the tables d'hote."
"Catherine tells me he has set up a business, and is making a great deal of 
money."
The doctor stared. "She has not told me that - and Lavinia didn't deign. 
Ah!" he cried, "Catherine has given me up. Not that it matters, for all 
that the business amounts to."
"She has not given up Mr. Townsend," said Mrs. Almond. "I saw that in the 
first half-minute. She has come home exactly the same."
"Exactly the same; not a grain more intelligent. She didn't notice a stick 
or a stone all the while we were away - not a picture nor a view, not a 
statue nor a cathedral."
"How could she notice? She had other things to think of; they are never for 
an instant out of her mind. She touches me very much."
"She would touch me if she didn't irritate me. That's the effect she has 
upon me now. I have tried everything upon her; I really have been quite 
merciless. But it is of no use whatever; she is absolutely glued. I have 
passed, in consequence, into the exasperated stage. At first I had a good 
deal of a certain genial curiosity about it; I wanted to see if she really 
would stick. But, good Lord, one's curiosity is satisfied! I see she is 
capable of it, and now she can let go."
"She will never let go," said Mrs. Almond.
"Take care, or you will exasperate me too. If she doesn't let go, she will 
be shaken off - sent tumbling into the dust. That's a nice position for my 
daughter. She can't see that if you are going to be pushed, you had better 
jump. And then she will complain of her bruises."
"She will never complain," said Mrs. Almond.
"That I shall object to even more. But the deuce will be that I can't 
prevent anything."
"If she is to have a fall," said Mrs. Almond, with a gentle laugh, "we must 
spread as many carpets as we can." And she carried out this idea by showing 
a great deal of motherly kindness to the girl.
Mrs. Penniman immediately wrote to Morris Townsend. The intimacy between 
these two was by this time consummate, but I must content myself with 
noting but a few of its features. Mrs. Penniman's own share in it was a 
singular sentiment, which might have been misinterpreted, but which in 
itself was not discreditable to the poor lady. It was a romantic interest 
in this attractive and unfortunate young man, and yet it was not such an 
interest as Catherine might have been jealous of. Mrs. Penniman had not a 
particle of jealousy of her niece. For herself, she felt as if she were 
Morris's mother or sister - a mother or sister of an emotional temperament 
- and she had an absorbing desire to make him comfortable and happy. She 
had striven to do so during the year that her brother left her an open 
field, and her efforts had been attended with the success that has been 
pointed out. She had never had a child of her own, and Catherine, whom she 
had done her best to invest with the importance that would naturally belong 
to a youthful Penniman, had only partly rewarded her zeal. Catherine, as an 
object of affection and solicitude, had never had that picturesque charm 
which (as it seemed to her) would have been a natural attribute of her own 
progeny. Even the maternal passion in Mrs. Penniman would have been 
romantic and factitious, and Catherine was not constituted to inspire a 
romantic passion. Mrs. Penniman was as fond of her as ever, but she had 
grown to feel that with Catherine she lacked opportunity. Sentimentally 
speaking, therefore, she had (though she had not disinherited her niece) 
adopted Morris Townsend, who gave her opportunity in abundance. She would 
have been very happy to have a handsome and tyrannical son, and would have 
taken an extreme interest in his love affairs. This was the light in which 
she had come to regard Morris, who had conciliated her at first, and made 
his impression by his delicate and calculated deference - a sort of 
exhibition to which Mrs. Penniman was particularly sensitive. He had 
largely abated his deference afterward, for he economised his resources, 
but the impression was made, and the young man's very brutality came to 
have a sort of filial value. If Mrs. Penniman had had a son, she would 
probably have been afraid of him, and at this stage of our narrative she 
was certainly afraid of Morris Townsend. This was one of the results of his 
domestication in Washington Square. He took his ease with her - as, for 
that matter, he would certainly have done with his own mother.



Chapter 28

The letter was a word of warning; it informed him that the doctor had come 
home more impracticable than ever. She might have reflected that Catherine 
would supply him with all the information he needed on this point; but we 
know that Mrs. Penniman's reflections were rarely just; and, moreover, she 
felt that it was not for her to depend on what Catherine might do. I have 
said that her young friend took his ease with her, and it is an 
illustration of the fact that he made no answer to her letter. He took note 
of it amply; but he lighted his cigar with it, and he waited, in tranquil 
confidence that he should receive another. "His state of mind really 
freezes my blood," Mrs. Penniman had written, alluding to her brother; and 
it would have seemed that upon this statement she could hardly improve. 
Nevertheless, she wrote again, expressing herself with the aid of a 
different figure. "His hatred of you burns with a lurid flame - the flame 
that never dies," she wrote. "But it doesn't light up the darkness of your 
future. If my affection could do so, all the years of your life would be an 
eternal sunshine. I can extract nothing from C.; she is so terribly 
secretive, like her father. She seems to expect to be married very soon, 
and has evidently made preparations in Europe - quantities of clothing, ten 
pairs of shoes, etc. My dear friend, you cannot set up in married life 
simply with a few pairs of shoes, can you? Tell me what you think of this. 
I am intensely anxious to see you, I have so much to say. I miss you 
dreadfully; the house seems so empty without you. What is the news 
downtown? Is the business extending? That dear little business. I think 
it's so brave of you! Couldn't I come to your office - just for three 
minutes? I might pass for a customer - is that what you call them? I might 
come in to buy something - some shares or some railroad things. Tell me 
what you think of that plan. I would carry a little reticule, like a woman 
of the people."
In spite of the suggestion about the reticule, Morris appeared to think 
poorly of the plan, for he gave Mrs. Penniman no encouragement whatever to 
visit his office, which he had already represented to her as a place 
peculiarly and unnaturally difficult to find. But as she persisted in 
desiring an interview - up to the last, after months of intimate colloquy, 
she called these meetings "interviews" - she agreed that they should take a 
walk together, and was even kind enough to leave his office for this 
purpose during the hours at which business might have been supposed to be 
liveliest. It was no surprise to him, when they met at a street corner, in 
a region of empty lots and undeveloped pavements (Mrs. Penniman being 
attired as much as possible like a "woman of the people"), to find that, in 
spite of her urgency, what she chiefly had to convey to him was the 
assurance of her sympathy. Of such assurances, however, he had already a 
voluminous collection, and it would not have been worth his while to 
forsake a fruitful avocation merely to hear Mrs. Penniman say, for the 
thousandth time, that she had made his cause her own. Morris had something 
of his own to say. It was not an easy thing to bring out, and while he 
turned it over, the difficulty made him acrimonious.
"Oh yes, I know perfectly that he combines the properties of a lump of ice 
and a red-hot coal," he observed. "Catherine has made it thoroughly clear, 
and you have told me so till I am sick of it. You needn't tell me again; I 
am perfectly satisfied. He will never give us a Penny; I regard that as 
mathematically proved."
Mrs. Penniman at this point had an inspiration.
"Couldn't you bring a lawsuit against him?" She wondered that this simple 
expedient had never occurred to her before.
"I will bring a lawsuit against you," said Morris, "if you ask me any more 
such aggravating questions. A man should know when he is beaten," he added, 
in a moment. "I must give her up!"
Mrs. Penniman received this declaration in silence, though it made her 
heart beat a little. It found her by no means unprepared, for she had 
accustomed herself to the thought that, if Morris should decidedly not be 
able to get her brother's money, it would not do for him to marry Catherine 
without it. "It would not do," was a vague way of putting the thing; but 
Mrs. Penniman's natural affection completed the idea, which, though it had 
not as yet been so crudely expressed between them as in the form that 
Morris had just given it, had nevertheless been implied so often, in 
certain easy intervals of talk, as he sat stretching his legs in the 
doctor's well-stuffed armchairs, that she had grown first to regard it with 
an emotion which she flattered herself was philosophic, and then to have a 
secret tenderness for it. The fact that she kept her tenderness secret 
proves, of course, that she was ashamed of it; but she managed to blink her 
shame by reminding herself that she was, after all, the official protector 
of her niece's marriage. Her logic would scarcely have passed muster with 
the doctor. In the first place, Morris must get the money, and she would 
help him to it. In the second, it was plain it would never come to him, and 
it would be a grievous pity he should marry without it - a young man who 
might so easily find something better. After her brother had delivered 
himself, on his return from Europe, of that incisive little address that 
has been quoted, Morris's cause seemed so hopeless that Mrs. Penniman fixed 
her attention exclusively upon the latter branch of her argument. If Morris 
had been her son, she would certainly have sacrificed Catherine to a 
superior conception of his future; and to be ready to do so, as the case 
stood, was therefore even a finer degree of devotion. Nevertheless, it 
checked her breath a little to have the sacrificial knife, as it were, 
suddenly thrust into her hand.
Morris walked along a moment, and then he repeated, harshly, "I must give 
her up!"
"I think I understand you," said Mrs. Penniman, gently.
"I certainly say it distinctly enough - brutally and vulgarly
He was ashamed of himself, and his shame was uncomfortable; and as he was 
extremely intolerant of discomfort, he felt vicious and cruel. He wanted to 
abuse somebody, and he began, cautiously - for he was always cautious - 
with himself.
"Couldn't you take her down a little?" he asked.
"Take her down?"
"Prepare her - try and ease me off."
Mrs. Penniman stopped, looking at him very solemnly.
"My poor Morris, do you know how much she loves you?"
"No, I don't. I don't want to know. I have always tried to keep from 
knowing. It would be too painful."
"She will suffer much," said Mrs. Penniman.
"You must console her. If you are as good a friend to me as you pretend to 
be, you will manage it."
Mrs. Penniman shook her head sadly.
"You talk of my 'pretending' to like you; but I can't pretend to hate you. 
I can only tell her I think very highly of you; and how will that console 
her for losing you?"
"The doctor will help you. He will be delighted at the thing being broken 
off; and as he is a knowing fellow, he will invent something to comfort 
her."
"He will invent a new torture," cried Mrs. Penniman. "Heaven deliver her 
from her father's comfort! It will consist of his crowing over her, and 
saying, 'I always told you so!'"
Morris coloured a most uncomfortable red.
"If you don't console her any better than you console me, you certainly 
won't be of much use. It's a damned disagreeable necessity; I feel it 
extremely, and you ought to make it easy for me."
"I will be your friend for life," Mrs. Penniman declared.
"Be my friend now!" and Morris walked on.
She went with him; she was almost trembling.
"Should you like me to tell her?" she asked.
"You mustn't tell her, but you can - you can-" And he hesitated, trying to 
think what Mrs. Penniman could do. "You can explain to her why it is. It's 
because I can't bring myself to step in between her and her father - to 
give him the pretext he grasps at so eagerly (it's a hideous sight!) for 
depriving her of her rights."
Mrs. Penniman felt with remarkable promptitude the charm of this formula.
"That's so like you," she said. "It's so finely felt."
Morris gave his stick an angry swing.
"Oh damnation!" he exclaimed, perversely.
Mrs. Penniman, however, was not discouraged.
"It may turn out better than you think. Catherine is, after all, so very 
peculiar." And she thought she might take it upon herself to assure him 
that, whatever happened, the girl would be very quiet - she wouldn't make a 
noise. They extended their walk, and while they proceeded Mrs. Penniman 
took upon herself other things besides, and ended by having assumed a 
considerable burden; Morris being ready enough, as may be imagined, to put 
everything off upon her. But he was not for a single instant the dupe of 
her blundering alacrity; he knew that of what she promised she was 
competent to perform but an insignificant fraction, and the more she 
professed her willingness to serve him, the greater fool he thought her.
"What will you do if you don't marry her?" she ventured to inquire in the 
course of this conversation.
"Something brilliant," said Morris. "Shouldn't you like me to do something 
brilliant?"
The idea gave Mrs. Penniman exceeding pleasure.
"I shall feel sadly taken in if you don't."
"I shall have to, to make up for this. This isn't at all brilliant, you 
know."
Mrs. Penniman mused a little, as if there might be some way of making out 
that it was; but she had to give up the attempt, and, to carry off the 
awkwardness of failure, she risked a new enquiry.
"Do you mean - do you mean another marriage?"
Morris greeted this question with a reflection which was hardly the less 
impudent from being inaudible. "Surely women are more crude than men!" And 
then he answered, audibly, "Never in the world!"
Mrs. Penniman felt disappointed and snubbed, and she relieved herself in a 
little vaguely sarcastic cry. He was certainly perverse.
"I give her up, not for another woman, but for a wider career," Morris 
announced.
This was very grand; but still Mrs. Penniman, who felt that she had exposed 
herself, was faintly rancorous.
"Do you mean never to come to see her again?" she asked, with some 
sharpness.
"Oh no, I shall come again; but what is the use of dragging it out? I have 
been four times since she came back, and it's terribly awkward work. I 
can't keep it up indefinitely; she oughtn't to expect that, you know. A 
woman should never keep a man dangling," he added, finely.
"Ah, but you must have your last parting!" urged his companion, in whose 
imagination the idea of last partings occupied a place inferior in dignity 
only to that of first meetings.



Chapter 29

He came again, without managing the last parting; and again and again, 
without finding that Mrs. Penniman had as yet done much to pave the path of 
retreat with flowers. It was devilish awkward, as he said, and he felt a 
lively animosity for Catherine's aunt, who, as he had now quite formed the 
habit of saying to himself, had dragged him into the mess, and was bound in 
common charity to get him out of it. Mrs. Penniman, to tell the truth, had, 
in the seclusion of her own apartment - and, I may add, amid the 
suggestiveness of Catherine's, which wore in those days the appearance of 
that of a young lady laying out her trousseau - Mrs. Penniman had measured 
her responsibilities, and taken fright at their magnitude. The task of 
preparing Catherine and easing off Morris presented difficulties which 
increased in the execution, and even led the impulsive Lavinia to ask 
herself whether the modification of the young man's original project had 
been conceived in a happy spirit. A brilliant future, a wider career, a 
conscience exempt from the reproach of interference between a young lady 
and her natural rights - these excellent things might be too troublesomely 
purchased. From Catherine herself Mrs. Penniman received no assistance 
whatever; the poor girl was apparently without suspicion of her danger. She 
looked at her lover with eyes of undiminished trust, and though she had 
less confidence in her aunt than in a young man with whom she had exchanged 
so many tender vows, she gave her no handle for explaining or confessing. 
Mrs. Penniman, faltering and wavering, declared Catherine was very stupid, 
put off the great scene, as she would have called it, from day to day, and 
wandered about, very uncomfortably, with her unexploded bomb in her hands. 
Morris's own scenes were very small ones just now; but even these were 
beyond his strength. He made his visits as brief as possible, and, while he 
sat with his mistress, found terribly little to talk about. She was waiting 
for him, in vulgar parlance, to name the day; and so long as he was 
unprepared to be explicit on this point, it seemed a mockery to pretend to 
talk about matters more abstract. She had no airs and no arts; she never 
attempted to disguise her expectancy. She was waiting on his good pleasure, 
and would wait modestly and patiently; his hanging back at this supreme 
time might appear strange, but of course he must have a good reason for it. 
Catherine would have made a wife of the gentle, old-fashioned pattern - 
regarding reasons as favours and windfalls, but no more expecting one every 
day than she would have expected a bouquet of camellias. During the period 
of her engagement, however, a young lady even of the most slender 
pretensions counts upon more bouquets than at other times; and there was a 
want of perfume in the air at this moment which at last excited the girl's 
alarm.
"Are you sick?" she asked of Morris. "You seem so restless, and you look 
pale."
"I am not at all well," said Morris; and it occurred to him that, if he 
could only make her pity him enough, he might get off.
"I am afraid you are overworked; you oughtn't to work so much."
"I must do that." And then he added, with a sort of calculated brutality, 
"I don't want to owe you everything."
"Ah, how can you say that?"
"I am too proud," said Morris.
"Yes - you are too proud."
"Well, you must take me as I am," he went on. "You can never change me."
"I don't want to change you," she said, gently. "I will take you as you 
are." And she stood looking at him.
"You know people talk tremendously about a man's marrying a rich girl," 
Morris remarked. "It's excessively disagreeable."
"But I am not rich," said Catherine.
"You are rich enough to make me talked about."
"Of course you are talked about. It's an honour."
"It's an honour I could easily dispense with."
She was on the point of asking him whether it was not a compensation for 
this annoyance that the poor girl who had the misfortune to bring it upon 
him loved him so dearly and believed in him so truly; but she hesitated, 
thinking that this would perhaps seem an exacting speech, and while she 
hesitated, he suddenly left her.
The next time he came, however, she brought it out, and she told him again 
that he was too proud. He repeated that he couldn't change, and this time 
she felt the impulse to say that with a little effort he might change.
Sometimes he thought that if he could only make a quarrel with her it might 
help him; but the question was how to quarrel with a young woman who had 
such treasures of concession. "I suppose you think the effort is all on 
your side," he broke out. "Don't you believe that I have my own effort to 
make?"
"It's all yours now," she said. "My effort is finished and done with."
"Well, mine is not."
"We must bear things together," said Catherine. "That's what we ought to 
do."
Morris attempted a natural smile. "There are some things which we can't 
very well bear together - for instance, separation."
"Why do you speak of separation?"
"Ah, you don't like it; I knew you wouldn't."
"Where are you going, Morris?" she suddenly asked.
He fixed his eye on her a moment, and for a part of that moment she was 
afraid of it. "Will you promise not to make a scene?"
"A scene - do I make scenes?"
"All women do!" said Morris, with the tone of large experience.
"I don't. Where are you going?"
"If I should say I was going away on business, should you think it very 
strange?"
She wondered a moment, gazing at him. "Yes - no. Not if you will take me 
with you."
"Take you with me - on business?"
"What is your business? Your business is to be with me."
"I don't earn my living with you," said Morris. "Or, rather," he cried, 
with a sudden inspiration, "that's just what I do - or what the world says 
I do!"
This ought perhaps to have been a great stroke, but it miscarried. "Where 
are you going?" Catherine simply repeated.
"To New Orleans - about buying some cotton."
"I am perfectly willing to go to New Orleans," Catherine said.
"Do you suppose I would take you to a nest of yellow fever?" cried Morris. 
"Do you suppose I would expose you at such a time as this?"
"If there is yellow fever, why should you go? Morris, you must not go."
"It is to make six thousand dollars," said Morris. "Do you grudge me that 
satisfaction?"
"We have no need of six thousand dollars. You think too much about money."
"You can afford to say that. This is a great chance; we heard of it last 
night." And he explained to her in what the chance consisted; and told her 
a long story, going over more than once several of the details, about the 
remarkable stroke of business which he and his partner had planned between 
them.
But Catherine's imagination, for reasons best known to herself, absolutely 
refused to be fired. "If you can go to New Orleans, I can go," she said. 
"Why shouldn't you catch yellow fever quite as easily as I? I am every bit 
as strong as you, and not in the least afraid of any fever. When we were in 
Europe we were in very unhealthy places; my father used to make me take 
some pills. I never caught anything, and I never was nervous. What will be 
the use of six thousand dollars if you die of a fever? When persons are 
going to be married they oughtn't to think so much about business. You 
shouldn't think about cotton; you should think about me. You can go to New 
Orleans some other time - there will always be plenty of cotton. It isn't 
the moment to choose. We have waited too long already." She spoke more 
forcibly and volubly than he had ever heard her, and she held his arm in 
her two hands.
"You said you wouldn't make a scene," cried Morris. "I call this a scene."
"It's you that are making it. I have never asked you anything before. We 
have waited too long already." And it was a comfort to her to think that 
she had hitherto asked so little; it seemed to make her right to insist the 
greater now.
Morris bethought himself a little. "Very well, then; we won't talk about it 
anymore. I will transact my business by letter." And he began to smooth his 
hat, as if to take leave.
"You won't go?" and she stood looking up at him.
He could not give up his idea of provoking a quarrel; it was so much the 
simplest way. He bent his eyes on her upturned face with the darkest frown 
he could achieve. "You are not discreet; you mustn't bully me."
But, as usual, she conceded everything. "No, I am not discreet; I know I am 
too pressing. But isn't it natural? It is only for a moment."
"In a moment you may do a great deal of harm. Try and be calmer the next 
time I come."
"When will you come?"
"Do you want to make conditions?" Morris asked. "I will come next 
Saturday."
"Come tomorrow," Catherine begged. "I want you to come tomorrow. I will be 
very quiet," she added; and her agitation had by this time become so great 
that the assurance was not unbecoming. A sudden fear had come over her; it 
was like the solid conjunction of a dozen disembodied doubts, and her 
imagination, at a single bound, had traversed an enormous distance. All her 
being, for the moment, was centred in the wish to keep him in the room.
Morris bent his head and kissed her forehead. "When you are quiet, you are 
perfection," he said, "but when you are violent, you are not in character."
It was Catherine's wish that there should be no violence about her save the 
beating of her heart, which she could not help; and she went on, as gently 
as possible, "Will you promise to come tomorrow?"
"I said Saturday!" Morris answered, smiling. He tried a frown at one 
moment, a smile at another; he was at his wit's end.
"Yes, Saturday too," she answered, trying to smile. "But tomorrow first." 
He was going to the door, and she went with him quickly. She leaned her 
shoulder against it; it seemed to her that she would do anything to keep 
him.
"If I am prevented from coming tomorrow, you will say I have deceived you," 
he said.
"How can you be prevented? You can come if you will."
"I am a busy man - I am not a dangler!" cried Morris, sternly.
His voice was so hard and unnatural that, with a helpless look at him, she 
turned away; and then he quickly laid his hand on the doorknob. He felt as 
if he were absolutely running away from her. But in an instant she was 
close to him again, and murmuring in a tone none the less penetrating for 
being low, "Morris, you are going to leave me."
"Yes, for a little while."
"For how long?"
"Till you are reasonable again."
"I shall never be reasonable, in that way." And she tried to keep him 
longer; it was almost a struggle. "Think of what I have done!" she broke 
out. "Morris, I have given up everything."
"You shall have everything back."
"You wouldn't say that if you didn't mean something. What is it? What has 
happened? What have I done? What has changed you?"
"I will write to you - that is better," Morris stammered.
"Ah, you won't come back!" she cried, bursting into tears.
"Dear Catherine," he said, "don't believe that. I promise you that you 
shall see me again." And he managed to get away, and to close the door 
behind him.



Chapter 30

It was almost the last outbreak of passion of her life; at least, she never 
indulged in another that the world knew anything about. But this one was 
long and terrible; she flung herself on the sofa and gave herself up to her 
grief She hardly knew what had happened; ostensibly she had only had a 
difference with her lover, as other girls had had before, and the thing was 
not only not a rupture, but she was under no obligation to regard it even 
as a menace. Nevertheless, she felt a wound, even if he had not dealt it; 
it seemed to her that a mask had suddenly fallen from his face. He had 
wished to get away from her; he had been angry and cruel, and said strange 
things, with strange looks. She was smothered and stunned; she buried her 
head in the cushions, sobbing and talking to herself. But at last she 
raised herself, with the fear that either her father or Mrs. Penniman would 
come in; and then she sat there, staring before her, while the room grew 
darker. She said to herself that perhaps he would come back to tell her he 
had not meant what he said; and she listened for his ring at the door, 
trying to believe that this was probable. A long time passed, but Morris 
remained absent; the shadows gathered; the evening settled down on the 
meagre elegance of the light, clear-coloured room; the fire went out. When 
it had grown dark, Catherine went to the window and looked out; she stood 
there for half an hour, on the mere chance that he would come up the steps. 
At last she turned away, for she saw her father come in. He had seen her at 
the window looking out, and he stopped a moment at the bottom of the white 
steps, and gravely, with an air of exaggerated courtesy, lifted his hat to 
her. The gesture was so incongruous to the condition she was in, this 
stately tribute of respect to a poor girl despised and forsaken was so out 
of place, that the thing gave her a kind of horror, and she hurried away to 
her room. It seemed to her that she had given Morris up.
She had to show herself half an hour later, and she was sustained at table 
by the immensity of her desire that her father should not perceive that 
anything had happened. This was a great help to her afterward, and it 
served her (though never as much as she supposed) from the first. On this 
occasion Doctor Sloper was rather talkative. He told a great many stories 
about a wonderful poodle that he had seen at the house of an old lady whom 
he visited professionally. Catherine not only tried to appear to listen to 
the anecdotes of the poodle, but she endeavoured to interest herself in 
them, so as not to think of her scene with Morris. That perhaps was an 
hallucination; he was mistaken, she was jealous; people didn't change like 
that from one day to another. Then she knew that she had had doubts before 
- strange suspicions, that were at once vague and acute - and that he had 
been different ever since her return from Europe: whereupon she tried again 
to listen to her father, who told a story so remarkably well. Afterward she 
went straight to her own room; it was beyond her strength to undertake to 
spend the evening with her aunt. All the evening, alone, she questioned 
herself. Her trouble was terrible; but was it a thing of her imagination, 
engendered by an extravagant sensibility, or did it represent a clear-cut 
reality, and had the worst that was possible actually come to pass? Mrs. 
Penniman, with a degree of tact that was as unusual as it was commendable, 
took the line of leaving her alone. The truth is, that her suspicions 
having been aroused, she indulged a desire, natural to a timid person, that 
the explosion should be localised. So long as the air still vibrated she 
kept out of the way.
She passed and repassed Catherine's door several times in the course of the 
evening, as if she expected to hear a plaintive moan behind it. But the 
room remained perfectly still; and accordingly the last thing before 
retiring to her own couch, she applied for admittance. Catherine was 
sitting up, and had a book that she pretended to be reading. She had no 
wish to go to bed, for she had no expectation of sleeping. After Mrs. 
Penniman had left her she sat up half the night, and she offered her 
visitor no inducement to remain. Her aunt came stealing in very gently, and 
approached her with great solemnity.
"I am afraid you are in trouble, my dear. Can I do anything to help you?"
"I am not in any trouble whatever, and do not need any help," said 
Catherine, fibbing roundly, and proving thereby that not only our faults, 
but our most involuntary misfortunes, tend to corrupt our morals.
"Has nothing happened to you?"
"Nothing whatever."
"Are you very sure, dear?"
"Perfectly sure."
"And can I really do nothing for you?"
"Nothing, Aunt, but kindly leave me alone," said Catherine.
Mrs. Penniman, though she had been afraid of too warm a welcome before, was 
now disappointed at so cold a one; and in relating afterward, as she did to 
many persons, and with considerable variations of detail, the history of 
the termination of her niece's engagement, she was usually careful to 
mention that the young lady, on a certain occasion, had "hustled" her out 
of the room. It was characteristic of Mrs. Penniman that she related this 
fact, not in the least out of malignity to Catherine, whom she very 
sufficiently pitied, but simply from a natural disposition to embellish any 
subject that she touched.
Catherine, as I have said, sat up half the night, as if she still expected 
to hear Morris Townsend ring at the door. On the morrow this expectation 
was less unreasonable; but it was not gratified by the reappearance of the 
young man. Neither had he written; there was not a word of explanation or 
reassurance. Fortunately for Catherine, she could take refuge from her 
excitement, which had now become intense, in her determination that her 
father should see nothing of it. How well she deceived her father we shall 
have occasion to learn; but her innocent arts were of little avail before a 
person of the rare perspicacity of Mrs. Penniman. This lady easily saw that 
she was agitated, and if there was any agitation going forward, Mrs. 
Penniman was not a person to forfeit her natural share in it. She returned 
to the charge the next evening, and requested her niece to confide in her - 
to unburden her heart. Perhaps she should be able to explain certain things 
that now seemed dark, and that she knew more about than Catherine supposed. 
If Catherine had been frigid the night before, today she was haughty.
"You are completely mistaken, and I have not the least idea what you mean. 
I don't know what you are trying to fasten on me, and I have never had less 
need of anyone's explanations in my life."
In this way the girl delivered herself, and from hour to hour kept her aunt 
at bay. From hour to hour Mrs. Penniman's curiosity grew. She would have 
given her little finger to know what Morris had said and done, what tone he 
had taken, what pretext he had found. She wrote to him, naturally, to 
request an interview; but she received, as naturally, no answer to her 
petition. Morris was not in a writing mood; for Catherine had addressed him 
two short notes which met with no acknowledgement. These notes were so 
brief that I may give them entire. "Won't you give me some sign that you 
didn't mean to be so cruel as you seemed on Tuesday?" - that was the first; 
the other was a little longer. "If I was unreasonable or suspicious on 
Tuesday - if I annoyed you or troubled you in any way - I beg your 
forgiveness, and I promise never again to be so foolish. I am punished 
enough, and I don't understand. Dear Morris, you are killing me!" These 
notes were dispatched on the Friday and Saturday; but Saturday and Sunday 
passed without bringing the poor girl the satisfaction she desired. Her 
punishment accumulated; she continued to bear it, however, with a good deal 
of superficial fortitude. On Saturday morning, the doctor, who had been 
watching in silence, spoke to his sister Lavinia.
"The thing has happened - the scoundrel has backed out!"
"Never!" cried Mrs. Penniman, who had bethought herself what she should say 
to Catherine, but was not provided with a line of defence against her 
brother, so that indignant negation was the only weapon in her hands.
"He has begged for a reprieve, then, if you like that better!"
"It seems to make you very happy that your daughter's affections have been 
trifled with."
"It does," said the doctor, "for I had foretold it! It's a great pleasure 
to be in the right."
"Your pleasures make one shudder!" his sister exclaimed.
Catherine went rigidly through her usual occupations; that is, to the point 
of going with her aunt to church on Sunday morning. She generally went to 
afternoon service as well; but on this occasion her courage faltered, and 
she begged of Mrs. Penniman to go without her.
"I am sure you have a secret," said Mrs. Penniman, with great significance, 
looking at her rather grimly.
"If I have, I shall keep it," Catherine answered, turning away.
Mrs. Penniman started for church; but before she had arrived, she stopped 
and turned back, and before twenty minutes had elapsed she re-entered the 
house, looked into the empty parlours, 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 humour with the conditions of the 
time, which passed very slowly as she sat in the front parlour, in her 
bonnet and her cashmere shawl, awaiting Catherine's return.
This event at last took place. She saw her - at the window - mount the 
steps, and she went to await her in the hall, where she pounced upon her as 
soon as she had entered the house, and drew her into the parlour, closing 
the door with solemnity. Catherine was flushed, and her eye was bright. 
Mrs. Penniman hardly knew what to think.
"May I venture to ask where you have been?" she demanded.
"I have been to take a walk," said Catherine. "I thought you had gone to 
church."
"I did go to church; but the service was shorter than usual. And pray where 
did you walk?"
"I don't know!" said Catherine.
"Your ignorance is most extraordinary! Dear Catherine, you can trust me."
"What am I to trust you with?"
"With your secret - your sorrow."
"I have no sorrow!" said Catherine, fiercely.
"My poor child," Mrs. Penniman insisted, "you can't deceive me. I know 
everything. I have been requested to - a - to converse with you."
"I don't want to converse!"
"It will relieve you. Don't you know Shakespeare's lines - 'The grief that 
does not speak'! My dear girl, it is better as it is!"
"What is better?" Catherine asked.
She was really too perverse. A certain amount of perversity was to be 
allowed for in a young lady whose lover had thrown her over; but not such 
an amount as would prove inconvenient to his apologists. "That you should 
be reasonable," said Mrs. Penniman, with some sternness, "that you should 
take counsel of worldly prudence, and submit to practical considerations; 
that you should agree to - a - separate."
Catherine had been ice up to this moment, but at this word she flamed up. 
"Separate? What do you know about our separating?"
Mrs. Penniman shook her head with a sadness in which there was almost a 
sense of injury. "Your pride is my pride, and your susceptibilities are 
mine. I see your side perfectly, but I also" - and she smiled with 
melancholy suggestiveness - "I also see the situation as a whole!"
This suggestiveness was lost upon Catherine, who repeated her violent 
inquiry. "Why do you talk about separation; what do you know about it?"
"We must study resignation," said Mrs. Penniman, hesitating, but 
sententious at a venture.
"Resignation to what?"
"To a change of - of our plans."
"My plans have not changed!" said Catherine, with a little laugh.
"Ah, but Mr. Townsend's have," her aunt answered, very gently.
"What do you mean?"
There was an imperious brevity in the tone of this inquiry, against which 
Mrs. Penniman felt bound to protest; the information with which she had 
undertaken to supply her niece was after all a favour. She had tried 
sharpness, and she had tried sternness; but neither would do; she was 
shocked at the girl's obstinacy. "Ah well," she said, "if he hasn't told 
you!" and she turned away.
Catherine watched her a moment in silence; then she hurried after her, 
stopping her before she reached the door. "Told me what? What do you mean? 
What are you hinting at and threatening me with?"
"Isn't it broken off?" asked Mrs. Penniman.
"My engagement? Not in the least!"
"I beg your pardon in that case. I have spoken too soon!"
"Too soon? Soon or late," Catherine broke out, "you speak foolishly and 
cruelly!"
"What has happened between you then?" asked her aunt, struck by the 
sincerity of this cry, "for something certainly has happened."
"Nothing has happened but that I love him more and more!"
Mrs. Penniman was silent an instant. "I suppose that's the reason you went 
to see him this afternoon."
Catherine flushed as if she had been struck. "Yes, I did go to see him! But 
that's my own business."
"Very well, then; we won't talk about it." And Mrs. Penniman moved toward 
the door again; but she was stopped by a sudden imploring cry from the 
girl.
"Aunt Lavinia, where has he gone?"
"Ah, you admit then that he has gone away! Didn't they know at his house?"
"They said he had left town. I asked no more questions; I was ashamed," 
said Catherine, simply enough.
"You needn't have taken so compromising a step if you had had a little more 
confidence in me," Mrs. Penniman observed, with a good deal of grandeur.
"Is it to New Orleans?" Catherine went on, irrelevantly.
It was the first time Mrs. Penniman had heard of New Orleans in this 
connection; but she was averse to letting Catherine know that she was in 
the dark. She attempted to strike an illumination from the instructions she 
had received from Morris. "My dear Catherine," she said, "when a separation 
has been agreed upon, the farther he goes away the better."
"Agreed upon? Has he agreed upon it with you?" A consummate sense of her 
aunt's meddlesome folly had come over her during the last five minutes, and 
she was sickened at the thought that Mrs. Penniman had been let loose, as 
it were, upon her happiness.
"He certainly has sometimes advised with me," said Mrs. Penniman.
"Is it you, then, that has changed him and made him so unnatural?" 
Catherine cried. "Is it you that have worked on him and taken him from me? 
He doesn't belong to you, and I don't see how you have anything to do with 
what is between us! Is it you that have made this plot, and told him to 
leave me? How could you be so wicked, so cruel? What have I ever done to 
you? Why can't you leave me alone? I was afraid you would spoil everything; 
for you do spoil everything you touch! I was afraid of you all the time we 
were abroad; I had no rest when I thought that you were always talking to 
him." Catherine went on with growing vehemence, pouring out, in her 
bitterness and in the clairvoyance of her passion (which suddenly, jumping 
all processes, made her judge her aunt finally and without appeal), the 
uneasiness which had lain for so many months upon her heart.
Mrs. Penniman was scared and bewildered; she saw no prospect of introducing 
her little account of the purity of Morris's motives. "You are a most 
ungrateful girl!" she cried. "Do you scold me for talking with him? I'm 
sure we never talked of anything but you!"
"Yes; and that was the way you worried him; you made him tired of my very 
name! I wish you had never spoken of me to him; I never asked your help!"
"I am sure if it hadn't been for me he would never have come to the house, 
and you would never have known that he thought of you," Mrs. Penniman 
rejoined, with a good deal of justice.
"I wish he never had come to the house, and that I never had known it! 
That's better than this," said poor Catherine.
"You are a very ungrateful girl," Aunt Lavinia repeated.
Catherine's outbreak of anger and the sense of wrong gave her, while they 
lasted, the satisfaction that comes from all assertion of force; they 
hurried her along, and there is always a sort of pleasure in cleaving the 
air. But at bottom she hated to be violent, and she was conscious of no 
aptitude for organised resentment. She calmed herself with a great effort, 
but with great rapidity, and walked about the room a few moments, trying to 
say to herself that her aunt had meant everything for the best. She did not 
succeed in saying it with much conviction, but after a little she was able 
to speak quietly enough.
"I am not ungrateful, but I am very unhappy. It's hard to be grateful for 
that," she said. "Will you please tell me where he is?"
"I haven't the least idea; I am not in secret correspondence with him!" And 
Mrs. Penniman wished, indeed, that she were, so that she might let him know 
how Catherine abused her, after all she had done.
"Was it a plan of his, then, to break off - ?" By this time Catherine had 
become completely quiet.
Mrs. Penniman began again to have a glimpse of her chance for explaining. 
"He shrunk - he shrunk," she said. "He lacked courage, but it was the 
courage to injure you! He couldn't bear to bring down on you your father's 
curse."
Catherine listened to this with her eyes fixed upon her aunt, and continued 
to gaze at her for some time afterward. "Did he tell you to say that?"
"He told me to say many things - all so delicate, so discriminating; and he 
told me to tell you he hoped you wouldn't despise him."
"I don't," said Catherine; and then she added, "And will he stay away 
forever?"
"Oh, forever is a long time. Your father, perhaps, won't live forever."
"Perhaps not."
"I am sure you appreciate - you understand - even though your heart 
bleeds," said Mrs. Penniman. "You doubtless think him too scrupulous. So do 
I, but I respect his scruples. What he asks of you is that you should do 
the same."
Catherine was still gazing at her aunt, but she spoke at last as if she had 
not heard or not understood her. "It has been a regular plan, then. He has 
broken it off deliberately; he has given me up."
"For the present, dear Catherine; he has put it off, only."
"He has left me alone," Catherine went on.
"Haven't you me?" asked Mrs. Penniman, with some solemnity.
Catherine shook her head slowly. "I don't believe it!" and she left the 
room.



Chapter 31

Though she had forced herself to be calm, she preferred practising this 
virtue in private, and she forebore to show herself at tea - a repast 
which, on Sundays, at six o'clock, took the place of dinner. Doctor Sloper 
and his sister sat face to face, but Mrs. Penniman never met her brother's 
eye. Late in the evening she went with him, but without Catherine, to their 
sister Almond's, where, between the two ladies, Catherine's unhappy 
situation was discussed with a frankness that was conditioned by a good 
deal of mysterious reticence on Mrs. Penniman's part.
"I am delighted he is not to marry her," said Mrs. Almond, "but he ought to 
be horsewhipped all the same."
Mrs. Penniman, who was shocked at her sister's coarseness, replied that he 
had been actuated by the noblest of motives - the desire not to impoverish 
Catherine.
"I am very happy that Catherine is not to be impoverished - but I hope he 
may never have a penny too much! And what does the poor girl say to you?" 
Mrs. Almond asked.
"She says I have a genius for consolation," said Mrs. Penniman.
This was the account of the matter that she gave to her sister, and it was 
perhaps with the consciousness of genius that, on her return that evening 
to Washington Square, she again presented herself for admittance at 
Catherine's door. Catherine came and opened it; she was apparently very 
quiet.
"I only want to give you a little word of advice," she said. "If your 
father asks you, say that everything is going on."
Catherine stood there, with her hand on the knob, looking at her aunt, but 
not asking her to come in. "Do you think he will ask me?"
"I am sure he will. He asked me just now, on our way home from your aunt 
Elizabeth's. I explained the whole thing to your aunt Elizabeth. I said to 
your father I knew nothing about it."
"Do you think he will ask me, when he sees - when he sees - ?" But here 
Catherine stopped.
"The more he sees, the more disagreeable he will be," said her aunt.
"He shall see as little as possible!" Catherine declared.
"Tell him you are to be married."
"So I am," said Catherine, softly; and she closed the door upon her aunt.
She could not have said this two days later - for instance, on Tuesday, 
when she at last received a letter from Morris Townsend. It was an epistle 
of considerable length, measuring five large square pages, and written at 
Philadelphia. It was an explanatory document, and it explained a great many 
things, chief among which were the considerations that had led the writer 
to take advantage of an urgent "professional" absence to try and banish 
from his mind the image of one whose path he had crossed only to scatter it 
with ruins. He ventured to expect but partial success in this attempt, but 
he could promise her that, whatever his failure, he would never again 
interpose between her generous heart and her brilliant prospects and filial 
duties. He closed with an intimation that his professional pursuits might 
compel him to travel for some months, and with the hope that when they 
should each have accommodated themselves to what was sternly involved in 
their respective positions - even should this result not be reached for 
years - they should meet as friends, as fellow sufferers, as innocent but 
philosophic victims of a great social law. That her life should be peaceful 
and happy was the dearest wish of him who ventured still to subscribe 
himself her most obedient servant. The letter was beautifully written, and 
Catherine, who kept it for many years after this, was able, when her sense 
of the bitterness of its meaning and the hollowness of its tone had grown 
less acute, to admire its grace of expression. At present, for a long time 
after she received it, all she had to help her was the determination, daily 
more rigid, to make no appeal to the compassion of her father.
He suffered a week to elapse, and then one day, in the morning, at an hour 
at which she rarely saw him, he strolled into the back parlour. He had 
watched his time, and he found her alone. She was sitting with some work, 
and he came and stood in front of her. He was going out; he had on his hat, 
and was drawing on his gloves.
"It doesn't seem to me that you are treating me just now with all the 
consideration I deserve," he said in a moment.
"I don't know what I have done," Catherine answered, with her eyes on her 
work.
"You have apparently quite banished from your mind the request I made you 
at Liverpool before we sailed - the request that you would notify me in 
advance before leaving my house."
"I have not left your house," said Catherine.
"But you intend to leave it, and, by what you gave me to understand, your 
departure must be impending. In fact, though you are still here in body, 
you are already absent in spirit. Your mind has taken up its residence with 
your prospective husband, and you might quite as well be lodged under the 
conjugal roof for all the benefit we get from your society."
"I will try and be more cheerful," said Catherine.
"You certainly ought to be cheerful; you ask a great deal if you are not. 
To the pleasure of marrying a charming young man you add that of having 
your own way; you strike me as a very lucky young lady!"
Catherine got up; she was suffocating. But she folded her work deliberately 
and correctly, bending her burning face upon it. Her father stood where he 
had planted himself; she hoped he would go, but he smoothed and buttoned 
his gloves, and then he rested his hands upon his hips.
"It would be a convenience to me to know when I may expect to have an empty 
house," he went on. "When you go, your aunt marches."
She looked at him at last, with a long, silent gaze, which, in spite of her 
pride and her resolution, uttered part of the appeal she had tried not to 
make. Her father's cold grey eye sounded her own, and he insisted on his 
point.
"Is it tomorrow? Is it next week, or the week after?"
"I shall not go away!" said Catherine.
The doctor raised his eyebrows. "Has he backed out?"
"I have broken off my engagement."
"Broken it off?"
"I have asked him to leave New York, and he has gone away for a long time."
The doctor was both puzzled and disappointed, but he solved his perplexity 
by saying to himself that his daughter simply misrepresented - justifiably, 
if one would, but nevertheless, misrepresented - the facts; and he eased 
off his disappointment, which was that of a man losing a chance for a 
little triumph that he had rather counted on, by a few words that he 
uttered aloud.
"How does he take his dismissal?"
"I don't know!" said Catherine, less ingeniously than she had hitherto 
spoken.
"You mean you don't care? You are rather cruel, after encouraging him and 
playing with him for so long!"
The doctor had his revenge, after all.



Chapter 32

Our Story has hitherto moved with very short steps, but as it approaches 
its termination it must take a long stride. As time went on, it might have 
appeared to the doctor that his daughter's account of her rapture with 
Morris Townsend, mere bravado as he had deemed it, was in some degree 
justified by the sequel. Morris remained as rigidly and unremittingly 
absent as if he had died of a broken heart, and Catherine had apparently 
buried the memory of this fruitless episode as deep as if it had terminated 
by her own choice. We know that she had been deeply and incurably wounded, 
but the doctor had no means of knowing it. He was certainly curious about 
it, and would have given a good deal to discover the exact truth; but it 
was his punishment that he never knew - his punishment, I mean, for the 
abuse of sarcasm in his relations with his daughter. There was a good deal 
of effective sarcasm in her keeping him in the dark, and the rest of the 
world conspired with her, in this sense, to be sarcastic. Mrs. Penniman 
told him nothing, partly because he never questioned her - he made too 
light of Mrs. Penniman for that - and partly because she flattered herself 
that a tormenting reserve, and a serene profession of ignorance, would 
avenge her for his theory that she had meddled in the matter. He went two 
or three times to see Mrs. Montgomery, but Mrs. Montgomery had nothing to 
impart. She simply knew that her brother's engagement was broken off; and 
now that Miss Sloper was out of danger, she preferred not to bear witness 
in any way against Morris. She had done so before - however unwillingly - 
because she was sorry for Miss Sloper; but she was not sorry for Miss 
Sloper now - not at all sorry. Morris had told her nothing about his 
relations with Miss Sloper at the time, and he had told her nothing since. 
He was always away, and he very seldom wrote to her; she believed he had 
gone to California. Mrs. Almond had, in her sister's phrase, "taken up" 
Catherine violently since the recent catastrophe; but, though the girl was 
very grateful to her for her kindness, she revealed no secrets, and the 
good lady could give the doctor no satisfaction. Even, however, had she 
been able to narrate to him the private history of his daughter's unhappy 
love affair, it would have given her a certain comfort to leave him in 
ignorance; for Mrs. Almond was at this time not altogether in sympathy with 
her brother. She had guessed for herself that Catherine had been cruelly 
jilted - she knew nothing from Mrs. Penniman, for Mrs. Penniman had not 
ventured to lay the famous explanation of Morris's motives before Mrs. 
Almond, though she had thought it good enough for Catherine - and she 
pronounced her brother too consistently indifferent to what the poor 
creature must have suffered and must still be suffering. Doctor Sloper had 
his theory, and he rarely altered his theories. The marriage would have 
been an abominable one, and the girl had had a blessed escape. She was not 
to be pitied for that, and to pretend to condole with her would have been 
to make concessions to the idea that she had ever had a right to think of 
Morris.
"I put my foot on this idea from the first, and I keep it there now," said 
the doctor. "I don't see anything cruel in that; one can't keep it there 
too long." To this Mrs. Almond more than once replied that, if Catherine 
had got rid of her incongruous lover, she deserved the credit of it, and 
that to bring herself to her father's enlightened view of the matter must 
have cost her an effort that he was bound to appreciate.
"I am by no means sure she has got rid of him," the doctor said. "There is 
not the smallest probability that, after having been as obstinate as a mule 
for two years, she suddenly became amenable to reason. It is infinitely 
more probable that he got rid of her."
"All the more reason you should be gentle with her."
"I am gentle with her. But I can't do the pathetic; I can't pump up tears, 
to look graceful, over the most fortunate thing that ever happened to her."
"You have no sympathy," said Mrs. Almond. "That was never your strong 
point. You have only to look at her to see that, right or wrong, and 
whether the rupture came from herself or from him, her poor little heart is 
grievously bruised."
"Handling bruises, and even dropping tears on them, doesn't make them any 
better! My business is to see she gets no more knocks, and that I shall 
carefully attend to. But I don't at all recognise your description of 
Catherine. She doesn't strike me in the least as a young woman going about 
in search of a moral poultice. In fact, she seems to me much better than 
while the fellow was hanging about. She is perfectly comfortable and 
blooming; she eats and sleeps, takes her usual exercise, and overloads 
herself, as usual, with finery. She is always knitting some purse or 
embroidering some handkerchief, and it seems to me she turns these articles 
out about as fast as ever. She hasn't much to say; but when had she 
anything to say? She had her little dance, and now she is sitting down to 
rest. I suspect that, on the whole, she enjoys it."
"She enjoys it as people enjoy getting rid of a leg that has been crushed. 
The state of mind after amputation is doubtless one of comparative repose."
"If your leg is a metaphor for young Townsend, I can assure you he has 
never been crushed. Crushed? Not he! He is alive and perfectly intact; and 
that's why I am not satisfied."
"Should you have liked to kill him?" asked Mrs. Almond.
"Yes, very much. I think it is quite possible that it is all a blind."
"A blind?"
"An arrangement between them. Il fait le mort, as they say in France; but 
he is looking out of the corner of his eye. You can depend upon it, he has 
not burnt his ships; he has kept one to come back in. When I am dead, he 
will set sail again, and then she will marry him."
"It is interesting to know that you accuse your only daughter of being the 
vilest of hypocrites," said Mrs. Almond.
"I don't see what difference her being my only daughter makes. It is better 
to accuse one than a dozen. But I don't accuse anyone. There is not the 
smallest hypocrisy about Catherine, and I deny that she even pretends to be 
miserable."
The doctor's idea that the thing was a "blind" had its intermissions and 
revivals; but it may be said, on the whole, to have increased as he grew 
older; together with his impressions of Catherine's blooming and 
comfortable condition. Naturally, if he had not found grounds for viewing 
her as a lovelorn maiden during the year or two that followed her great 
trouble, he found none at a time when she had completely recovered her self-
possession. He was obliged to recognise 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 
recognised this duty to the utmost; she had a great disapproval of brooding 
and moping. She had, of course, no faculty for quenching memory in 
dissipation; but she mingled freely in the usual gaieties of the town, and 
she became at last an inevitable figure at all respectable entertainments. 
She was greatly liked, and as time went on she grew to be a sort of kindly 
maiden aunt to the younger portion of society. Young girls were apt to 
confide to her their love affairs (which they never did to Mrs. Penniman), 
and young men to be fond of her without knowing why. She developed a few 
harmless eccentricities; her habits, once formed, were rather stiffly 
maintained; her opinions, on all moral and social matters, were extremely 
conservative; and before she was forty she was regarded as an old-fashioned 
person, and an authority on customs that had passed away. Mrs. Penniman, in 
comparison, was quite a girlish figure; she grew younger as she advanced in 
life. She lost none of her relish for beauty and mystery, but she had 
little opportunity to exercise it. With Catherine's later wooers she failed 
to establish relations as intimate as those which had given her so many 
interesting hours in the society of Morris Townsend. These gentlemen had an 
indefinable mistrust of her good offices, and they never talked to her 
about Catherine's charms. Her ringlets, her buckles and bangles glistened 
more brightly with each succeeding year, and she remained quite the same 
officious and imaginative Mrs. Penniman, and the odd mixture of impetuosity 
and circumspection, that we have hitherto known. As regards one point, 
however, her circumspection prevailed, and she must be given due credit for 
it. For upward of seventeen years she never mentioned Morris Townsend's 
name to her niece. Catherine was grateful to her, but this consistent 
silence, so little in accord with her aunt's character, gave her a certain 
alarm, and she could never wholly rid herself of a suspicion that Mrs. 
Penniman sometimes had news of him.



Chapter 33

Little by little Doctor Sloper had retired from his profession; he visited 
only those patients in whose symptoms he recognised a certain originality. 
He went again to Europe, and remained two years; Catherine went with him, 
and on this occasion Mrs. Penniman was of the party. Europe apparently had 
few surprises for Mrs. Penniman, who frequently remarked, in the most 
romantic sites, "You know I am very familiar with all this." It should be 
added that such remarks were usually not addressed to her brother, or yet 
to her niece, but to fellow tourists who happened to be at hand, or even to 
the cicerone or the goatherd in the foreground.
One day, after his return from Europe, the doctor said something to his 
daughter that made her start - it seemed to come from so far out of the 
past.
"I should like you to promise me something before I die."
"Why do you talk about your dying?" she asked.
"Because I am sixty-eight years old."
"I hope you will live a long time," said Catherine.
"I hope I shall! But someday I shall take a bad cold, and then it will not 
matter much what anyone hopes. That will be the manner of my exit, and when 
it takes place, remember I told you so. Promise me not to marry Morris 
Townsend after I am gone."
This was what made Catherine start, as I have said; but her start was a 
silent one, and for some moments she said nothing. "Why do you speak of 
him?" she asked at last.
"You challenge everything I say. I speak of him because he's a topic, like 
any other. He's to be seen, like anyone else, and he is still looking for a 
wife - having had one and got rid of her, I don't know by what means. He 
has lately been in New York, and at your cousin Marian's house; your aunt 
Elizabeth saw him there."
"They neither of them told me," said Catherine.
"That's their merit; it's not yours. He has grown fat and bald, and he has 
not made his fortune. But I can't trust those facts alone to steel your 
heart against him, and that's why I ask you to promise."
"Fat and bald." These words presented a strange image to Catherine's mind, 
out of which the memory of the most beautiful young man in the world had 
never faded. "I don't think you understand," she said. "I very seldom think 
of Mr. Townsend."
"It will be very easy for you to go on, then. Promise me, after my death, 
to do the same."
Again, for some moments, Catherine was silent; her father's request deeply 
amazed her; it opened an old wound, and made it ache afresh. "I don't think 
I can promise that," she answered.
"It would be a great satisfaction," said her father.
"You don't understand. I can't promise that."
The doctor was silent a minute. "I ask you for a particular reason. I am 
altering my will."
This reason failed to strike Catherine; and indeed she scarcely understood 
it. All her feelings were merged in the sense that he was trying to treat 
her as he had treated her years before. She had suffered from it then; and 
now all her experience, all her acquired tranquillity and rigidity 
protested. She had been so humble in her youth that she could now afford to 
have a little pride, and there was something in his request, and in her 
father's thinking himself so free to make it, that seemed an injury to her 
dignity. Poor Catherine's dignity was not aggressive; it never sat in 
state; but if you pushed far enough you could find it. Her father had 
pushed very far.
"I can't promise," she simply repeated.
"You are very obstinate," said the doctor.
"I don't think you understand."
"Please explain, then."
"I can't explain," said Catherine, "and I can't promise."
"Upon my word," her father exclaimed, "I had no idea how obstinate you 
are!"
She knew herself that she was obstinate, and it gave her a certain joy. She 
was now a middle-aged woman.
About a year after this, the accident that the doctor had spoken of 
occurred: He took a violent cold. Driving out to Bloomingdale one April day 
to see a patient of unsound mind, who was confined in a private asylum for 
the insane, and whose family greatly desired a medical opinion from an 
eminent source, he was caught in a spring shower, and being in a buggy, 
without a hood, he found himself soaked to the skin. He came home with an 
ominous chill, and on the morrow he was seriously ill. "It is congestion of 
the lungs," he said to Catherine. "I shall need very good nursing. It will 
make no difference, for I shall not recover; but I wish everything to be 
done, to the smallest detail, as if I should. I hate an ill-conducted sick-
room, and you will be so good as to nurse me, on the hypothesis that I 
shall get well." He told her which of his fellow physicians to send for, 
and gave her a multitude of minute directions; it was quite on the 
optimistic hypothesis that she nursed him. But he had never been wrong in 
his life, and he was not wrong now. He was touching his seventieth year, 
and though he had a very well-tempered constitution, his hold upon life had 
lost its firmness. He died after three weeks' illness, during which Mrs. 
Penniman, as well as his daughter, had been assiduous at his bedside.
On his will being opened, after a decent interval, it was found to consist 
of two portions. The first of these dated from ten years back, and 
consisted of a series of dispositions by which he left the great mass of 
his property to his daughter, with becoming legacies to his two sisters. 
The second was a codicil, of recent origin, maintaining the annuities to 
Mrs. Penniman and Mrs. Almond, but reducing Catherine's share to a fifth of 
what he had first bequeathed her. "She is amply provided for from her 
mother's side," the document ran, "never having spent more than a fraction 
of her income from this source; so that her fortune is already more than 
sufficient to attract those unscrupulous adventurers whom she has given me 
reason to believe that she persists in regarding as an interesting class." 
The large remainder of his property, therefore, Doctor Sloper had divided 
into seven unequal parts, which he left, as endowments, to as many 
different hospitals and schools of medicine in various cities of the union.
To Mrs. Penniman it seemed monstrous that a man should play such tricks 
with other people's money; for after his death, of course, as she said, it 
was other people's. "Of course, you will immediately break the will," she 
remarked to Catherine.
"Oh no," Catherine answered, "I like it very much. Only I wish it had been 
expressed a little differently!"



Chapter 34

It was her habit to remain in town very late in the summer; she preferred 
the house in Washington Square to any other habitation whatever, and it was 
under protest that she used to go to the seaside for the month of August. 
At the sea she spent her month at an hotel. The year that her father died 
she intermitted this custom altogether, not thinking it consistent with 
deep mourning; and the year after that she put off her departure till so 
late that the middle of August found her still in the heated solitude of 
Washington Square. Mrs. Penniman, who was fond of a change, was usually 
eager for a visit to the country; but this year she appeared quite content 
with such rural impressions as she could gather at the parlour window from 
the ailanthus trees behind the wooden paling. The peculiar fragrance of 
this vegetation used to diffuse itself in the evening air, and Mrs. 
Penniman, on the warm nights of July, often sat at the open window and 
inhaled it. This was a happy moment for Mrs. Penniman; after the death of 
her brother she felt more free to obey her impulses. A vague oppression had 
disappeared from her life, and she enjoyed a sense of freedom of which she 
had not been conscious since the memorable time, so long ago, when the 
doctor went abroad with Catherine and left her at home to entertain Morris 
Townsend. The year that had elapsed since her brother's death reminded her 
of that happy time, because, although Catherine, in growing older, had 
become a person to be reckoned with, yet her society was a very different 
thing, as Mrs. Penniman said, from that of a tank of cold water. The elder 
lady hardly knew what use to make of this larger margin of her life; she 
sat and looked at it very much as she had often sat, with her poised needle 
in her hand, before her tapestry frame. She had a confident hope, however, 
that her rich impulses, her talent for embroidery, would still find their 
application, and this confidence was justified before many months had 
elapsed. 
Catherine continued to live in her father's house, in spite of its being 
represented to her that a maiden lady of quiet habits might find a more 
convenient abode in one of the smaller dwellings, with brownstone fronts, 
which had at this time begun to adorn the transverse thoroughfares in the 
upper part of the town. She liked the earlier structure - it had begun by 
this time to be called an "old" house - and proposed to herself to end her 
days in it. If it was too large for a pair of unpretending gentlewomen, 
this was better than the opposite fault; for Catherine had no desire to 
find herself in closer quarters with her aunt. She expected to spend the 
rest of her life in Washington Square, and to enjoy Mrs. Penniman's society 
for the whole of this period; as she had a conviction that, long as she 
might live, her aunt would live at least as long, and always retain her 
brilliancy and activity. Mrs. Penniman suggested to her the idea of a rich 
vitality. 
On one of those warm evenings in July of which mention has been made, the 
two ladies sat together at an open window, looking out on the quiet Square. 
It was too hot for lighted lamps, for reading, or for work; it might have 
appeared too hot even for conversation, Mrs. Penniman having long been 
speechless. She sat forward in the window, half on the balcony, humming a 
little song. Catherine was within the room, in a low rocking-chair, dressed 
in white, and slowly using a large palmetto fan. It was in this way, at 
this season, that the aunt and niece, after they had had tea, habitually 
spent their evenings. 
"Catherine," said Mrs. Penniman at last, "I am going to say something that 
will surprise you." 
"Pray do," Catherine answered. "I like surprises. And it is so quiet now." 
"Well, then, I have seen Morris Townsend." 
If Catherine was surprised, she checked the expression of it; she gave 
neither a start nor an exclamation. She remained, indeed, for some moments 
intensely still, and this may very well have been a symptom of emotion. "I 
hope he was well," she said at last. 
''I don't know; he is a great deal changed. He would like very much to see 
you." 
"I would rather not see him," said Catherine, quickly. 
"I was afraid you would say that. But you don't seem surprised!" 
"I am - very much." 
"I met him at Marian's," said Mrs. Penniman. "He goes to Marian's, and they 
are so afraid you will meet him there. It's my belief that that's why he 
goes. He wants so much to see you." Catherine made no response to this, and 
Mrs. Penniman went on. "I didn't know him at first, he is so remarkably 
changed; but he knew me in a minute. He says I am not in the least changed. 
You know how polite he always was. He was coming away when I came, and we 
walked a little distance together. He is still very handsome, only of 
course he looks older, and he is not so - so animated as he used to be. 
There was a touch of sadness about him; but there was a touch of sadness 
about him before, especially when he went away. I am afraid he has not been 
very successful - that he has never got thoroughly established. I don't 
suppose he is sufficiently plodding, and that, after all, is what succeeds 
in this world." Mrs. Penniman had not mentioned Morris Townsend's name to 
her niece for upwards of the fifth of a century; but now that she had 
broken the spell, she seemed to wish to make up for lost time, as if there 
had been a sort of exhilaration in hearing herself talk of him. She 
proceeded, however, with considerable caution, pausing occasionally to let 
Catherine give some sign. Catherine gave no other sign than to stop the 
rocking of her chair and the swaying of her fan; she sat motionless and 
silent. "It was on Tuesday last," said Mrs. Penniman, "and I have been 
hesitating ever since about telling you. I didn't know how you might like 
it. At last I thought that it was so long ago that you would probably not 
have any particular feeling. I saw him again after meeting him at Marian's. 
I met him in the street, and he went a few steps with me. The first thing 
he said was about you; he asked ever so many questions. Marian didn't want 
me to speak to you; she didn't want you to know that they receive him. I 
told him I was sure that after all these years you couldn't have any 
feeling about that; you couldn't grudge him the hospitality of his own 
cousin's house. I said you would be bitter indeed if you did that. Marian 
has the most extraordinary ideas about what happened between you; she seems 
to think he behaved in some very unusual manner. I took the liberty of 
reminding her of the real facts, and placing the story in its true light. 
He has no bitterness, Catherine, I can assure you; and he might be excused 
for it, for things have not gone well with him. He has been all over the 
world, and tried to establish himself everywhere; but his evil star was 
against him. It is most interesting to hear him talk of his evil star. 
Everything failed; everything but his - you know, you remember - his proud, 
high spirit. I believe he married some lady somewhere in Europe. You know 
they marry in such a peculiar matter of course way in Europe; a marriage of 
reason they call it. She died soon afterward; as he said to me, she only 
flitted across his life. He has not been in New York for ten years; he came 
back a few days ago. The first thing he did was to ask me about you. He had 
heard you had never married; he seemed very much interested about that. He 
said you had been the real romance of his life."
Catherine had suffered her companion to proceed from point to point, and 
pause to pause, without interrupting her; she fixed her eyes on the ground 
and listened. But the last phrase I have quoted was followed by a pause of 
peculiar significance, and then, at last, Catherine spoke. It will be 
observed that before doing so she had received a good deal of information 
about Morris Townsend. "Please say no more; please don't follow up that 
subject." 
"Doesn't it interest you?" asked Mrs. Penniman, with a certain timorous 
archness. 
"It pains me," said Catherine. 
"I was afraid you would say that. But don't you think you could get used to 
it? He wants so much to see you." 
"Please don't, Aunt Lavinia," said Catherine, getting up from her seat. She 
moved quickly away, and went to the other window, which stood open to the 
balcony; and here, in the embrasure, concealed from her aunt by the white 
curtains, she remained a long time, looking out into the warm darkness. She 
had had a great shock; it was as if the gulf of the past had suddenly 
opened, and a spectral figure had risen out of it. There were some things 
she believed she had got over, some feelings that she had thought of as 
dead; but apparently there was a certain vitality in them still. Mrs. 
Penniman had made them stir themselves. It was but a momentary agitation, 
Catherine said to herself; it would presently pass away. She was trembling, 
and her heart was beating so that she could feel it; but this also would 
subside. Then suddenly, while she waited for a return of her calmness, she 
burst into tears. But her tears flowed very silently, so that Mrs. Penniman 
had no observation of them. It was perhaps, however, because Mrs. Penniman 
suspected them that she said no more that evening about Morris Townsend.


Chapter 35

Her refreshed attention to this gentleman had not those limits of which 
Catherine desired, for herself, to be conscious; it lasted long enough to 
enable her to wait another week before speaking of him again. It was under 
the same circumstances that she once more attacked the subject. She had 
been sitting with her niece in the evening; only on this occasion, as the 
night was not so warm, the lamp had been lighted, and Catherine had placed 
herself near it with a morsel of fancywork. Mrs. Penniman went and sat 
alone for half an hour on the balcony; then she came in, moving vaguely 
about the room. At last she sunk into a seat near Catherine, with clasped 
hands, and a little look of excitement. 
"Shall you be angry if I speak to you again about him?" she asked. 
Catherine looked up at her quietly. "Who is he?" 
"He whom you once loved." "I shall not be angry, but I shall not like it." 
"He sent you a message," said Mrs. Penniman "I promised him to deliver it, 
and I must keep my promise." 
In all these years Catherine had had time to forget how little she had to 
thank her aunt for in the season of her misery; she had long ago forgiven 
Mrs. Penniman for taking too much upon herself. But for a moment this 
attitude of interposition and disinterestedness, this carrying of messages 
and redeeming of promises, brought back the sense that her companion was a 
dangerous woman. She had said she would not be angry; but for an instant 
she felt sore. "I don't care what you do with your promise!" she answered. 
Mrs. Penniman, however, with her high conception of the sanctity of 
pledges, carried her point. "I have gone too far to retreat," she said, 
though precisely what this meant she was not at pains to explain. "Mr. 
Townsend wishes most particularly to see you, Catherine; he believes that 
if you knew how much, and why, he wishes it, you would consent to do so." 
"There can be no reason," said Catherine, "no good reason." 
"His happiness depends upon it. Is not that a good reason?" asked Mrs. 
Penniman, impressively. 
"Not for me. My happiness does not." 
"I think you will be happier after you have seen him. He is going away 
again - going to resume his wanderings. It is a very lonely, restless, 
joyless life. Before he goes he wishes to speak to you; it is a fixed idea 
with him - he is always thinking of it. He has something very important to 
say to you. He believes that you never understood him - that you never 
judged him rightly, and the belief has always weighed upon him terribly. He 
wishes to justify himself; he believes that in a very few words he could do 
so. He wishes to meet you as a friend." 
Catherine listened to this wonderful speech without pausing in her work; 
she had now had several days to accustom herself to think of Morris 
Townsend again as an actuality. When it was over she said simply, "Please 
say to Mr. Townsend that I wish he would leave me alone." 
She had hardly spoken when a sharp, firm ring at the door vibrated through 
the summer night. Catherine looked up at the clock; it marked a quarter 
past nine - a very late hour for visitors, especially in the empty 
condition of the town. Mrs. Penniman at the same moment gave a little 
start, and then Catherine's eyes turned quickly to her aunt. They met Mrs. 
Penniman's, and sounded them for a moment sharply. Mrs. Penniman was 
blushing; her look was a conscious one; it seemed to confess something. 
Catherine guessed its meaning, and rose quickly from her chair.
"Aunt Penniman," she said, in a tone that scared her companion, "have you 
taken the liberty... ?" 
"My dearest Catherine," stammered Mrs. Penniman, "just wait till you see 
him!"
Catherine had frightened her aunt, but she was also frightened herself; she 
was on the point of rushing to give orders to the servant, who was passing 
to the door, to admit no one; but the fear of meeting her visitor checked 
her. 
"Mr Morris Townsend." 
This was what she heard, vaguely but recognizably, articulated by the 
domestic, while she hesitated. She had her back turned to the door of the 
parlour, and for some moments she kept it turned, feeling that he had come 
in. He had not spoken, however, and at last she faced about. Then she saw a 
gentleman standing in the middle of the room, from which her aunt had 
discreetly retired. 
She would never have known him. He was forty-five years old, and his figure 
was not that of the straight, slim young man she remembered. But it was a 
very fine presence, and a fair and lustrous beard, spreading itself upon a 
well-presented chest, contributed to its effect. After a moment Catherine 
recognized the upper half of the face, which, though her visitor's 
clustering locks had grown thin, was still remarkably handsome. He stood in 
a deeply deferential attitude, with his eyes on her face. "I have ventured -
 I have ventured," he said; and then he paused, looking about him, as if he 
expected her to ask him to sit down. It was the old voice; but it had not 
the old charm. Catherine, for a minute, was conscious of a distinct 
determination not to invite him to take a seat. Why had he come? It was 
wrong for him to come. Morris was embarrassed, but Catherine gave him no 
help. It was not that she was glad of his embarrassment; on the contrary, 
it excited all her own liabilities of this kind, and gave her great pain. 
But how could she welcome him when she felt so vividly that he ought not to 
have come? "I wanted so much - I was determined," Morris went on. But he 
stopped again; it was not easy. Catherine still said nothing, and he may 
well have recalled with apprehension her ancient faculty of silence. She 
continued to look at him, however, and as she did so she made the strangest 
observation. It seemed to be he, and yet not he; it was the man who had 
been everything, and yet this person was nothing. How long ago it was - how 
old she had grown - how much she had lived! She had lived on something that 
was connected with him, and she had consumed it in doing so. This person 
did not look unhappy. He was fair and well-preserved, perfectly dressed, 
mature and complete. As Catherine looked at him, the story of his life 
defined itself in his eyes; he had made himself comfortable, and he had 
never been caught. But even while her perception opened itself to this, she 
had no desire to catch him; his presence was painful to her, and she only 
wished he would go. 
"Will you not sit down?" he asked. 
"I think we had better not," said Catherine. 
"I offend you by coming?" He was very grave; he spoke in a tone of the 
richest respect. 
"I don't think you ought to have come." 
"Did not Mrs. Penniman tell you - did she not give you my message?"
"She told me something, but I did not understand." 
"I wish you would let me tell you - let me speak for myself." 
"I don't think it is necessary," said Catherine. 
"Not for you, perhaps, but for me. It would be a great satisfaction - and I 
have not many." He seemed to be coming nearer; Catherine turned away. "Can 
we not be friends again?" he asked. 
"We're not enemies," said Catherine. "I have none but friendly feelings to 
you." 
''Ah, I wonder whether you know the happiness it gives me to hear you say 
that!" Catherine uttered no intimation that she measured the influence of 
her words; and he presently went on, "You have not changed - the years have 
passed happily for you." 
"They have passed very quietly," said Catherine. 
"They have left no marks; you are admirably young." This time he succeeded 
in coming nearer - he was close to her; she saw his glossy perfumed beard, 
and his eyes above it looking strange and hard. It was very different from 
his old - from his young - face. If she had first seen him this way she 
would not have liked him. It seemed to her that he was smiling, or trying 
to smile. "Catherine," he said, lowering his voice, "I have never ceased to 
think of you." 
"Please don't say these things," she answered. 
"Do you hate me?" 
"Oh no," said Catherine. 
Something in her tone discouraged him, but in a moment he recovered 
himself. "Have you still some kindness for me, then?"
"I don't know why you have come here to ask me such things!" Catherine 
exclaimed. 
"Because for many years it has been the desire of my life that we should be 
friends again." 
"That is impossible." 
"Why so? Not if you will allow it." 
"I will not allow it," said Catherine. 
He looked at her again in silence. "I see; my presence troubles you and 
pains you. I will go away; but you must give me leave to come again." 
"Please don't come again," she said. 
"Never? Never?"
She made a great effort; she wished to say something that would make it 
impossible he should ever again cross her threshold. "It is wrong of you. 
There is no propriety in it - no reason for it." 
"Ah, dearest lady, you do me injustice!" cried Morris Townsend. "We have 
only waited, and now we are free." 
"You treated me badly," said Catherine. 
"Not if you think of it rightly. You had your quiet life with your father - 
which was just what I could not make up my mind to rob you of." 
"Yes; I had that." 
Morris felt it to be a considerable damage to his cause that he could not 
add that she had had something more besides; for it is needless to say that 
he had learned the contents of Doctor Sloper's will. He was, nevertheless, 
not at a loss. "There are worse fates than that!" he exclaimed, with 
expression; and he might have been supposed to refer to his own unprotected 
situation. Then he added, with a deeper tenderness, "Catherine, have you 
never forgiven me?"
"I forgave you years ago, but it is useless for us to attempt to be 
friends." 
"Not if we forget the past. We have still a future, thank God!" 
"I can't forget - I don't forget," said Catherine. "You treated me too 
badly. I felt it very much; I felt it for years." And then she went on, 
with her wish to show him that he must not come to her this way, "I can't 
begin again - I can't take it up. Everything is dead and buried. It was too 
serious; it made a great change in my life. I never expected to see you 
here." 
"Ah, you are angry!" cried Morris, who wished immensely that he could 
extort some flash of passion from her calmness. In that case he might hope. 
"No, I am not angry. Anger does not last that way for years. But there are 
other things. Impressions last, when they have been strong. But I can't 
talk." 
Morris stood stroking his beard, with a clouded eye. "Why have you never 
married?" he asked, abruptly. "You have had opportunities." 
"I didn't wish to marry." 
"Yes, you are rich, you are free; you had nothing to gain." 
"I had nothing to gain," said Catherine. 
Morris looked vaguely round him, and gave a deep sigh. "Well, I was in 
hopes that we might still have been friends." 
"I meant to tell you, by my aunt, in answer to your message - if you had 
waited for an answer - that it was unnecessary for you to come in that 
hope." 
"Good-bye, then," said Morris. "Excuse my indiscretion." 
He bowed, and she turned away - standing there, averted, with her eyes on 
the ground, for some moments after she had heard him dose the door of the 
room. 
In the hall he found Mrs. Penniman, fluttered and eager; she appeared to 
have been hovering there under the irreconcilable promptings of her 
curiosity and her dignity. 
"That was a precious plan of yours!" said Morris, clapping on his hat. 
"Is she so hard?" asked Mrs. Penniman. 
"She doesn't care a button for me - with her confounded little dry manner." 
"Was it very dry?" pursued Mrs. Penniman, with solicitude. 
Morris took no notice of her question; he stood musing an instant, with his 
hat on. "But why the deuce, then, would she never marry?"
"Yes - why indeed?" sighed Mrs. Penniman. And then, as if from a sense of 
the inadequacy of this explanation, "But you will not despair - you will 
come back?"
"Come back? Damnation!" And Morris Townsend strode out of the house, 
leaving Mrs. Penniman staring. 
Catherine, meanwhile, in the parlour, picking up her morsel of fancywork, 
had seated herself with it again - for life, as it were.