Washington Square

“He is in love with this regal creature, then?” the Doctor inquired humorously.

“Oh, father,” cried the girl, still more faintly, devoutly thankful the carriage was dark.

“I don’t know that; but he admired her dress.”

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

V

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.