Washington Square

“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 younger 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 nor 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 protégé.  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 upwards 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 the slightest 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.”