第44章

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 fix.""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 favor 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.