"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.
