Washington Square

“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.

XXIV

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 over-night, 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 reflexion, 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.