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"I was afraid you would say that. But you don't seem surprised!" "I am very much." "I met him at Marian's," said Mrs. Penniman. "He goes to Marian's, and they are so afraid you will meet him there. It's my belief that that's why he goes. He wants so much to see you." Catherine made no response to this, and Mrs. Penniman went on. "I didn't know him at first; he is so remarkably changed.
There were further details which seemed negligible to the philanthropist, because the pictured hero of the invigorator already suggested Judge Penniman, the ever-ailing father of Winona. The likeness was not wholly fanciful. True, the judge was not so abject as the first figure, but then he was not so obtrusively vigorous as the second. "A bottle of that," said Wilbur, and pointed to the card.
"Not to-night, dear, but in a few days, I would suppose." It sent Mrs. Penniman to the stove again. "I don't just know when I will go," said the Merle twin, surveying a replenished plate. "But I guess I'll give you back that knife you bought me; I probably won't need it up there. I'll probably have plenty of better knives than that knife." The Wilbur twin questioned this, but hid his doubt.
All the evening, alone, she questioned herself. Her trouble was terrible; but was it a thing of her imagination, engendered by an extravagant sensibility, or did it represent a clear-cut reality, and had the worst that was possible actually come to pass? Mrs. Penniman, with a degree of tact that was as unusual as it was commendable, took the line of leaving her alone.
She was incapable of elaborate artifice, and she resorted to no jocular device to no affectation of the belief that she had been maligned to learn what she desired. "What did you say you would tell me?" she asked. Mrs. Penniman came up to her, smiling and nodding a little, looked at her all over, and gave a twist to the knot of ribbon in her neck.
And this idea of Catherine "sticking" appeared to have a comical side, and to offer a prospect of entertainment. He determined, as he said to himself, to see it out. It was for reasons connected with this determination that on the morrow he sought a few words of private conversation with Mrs. Penniman.
She held up her head and busied her hands, and went about her daily occupations; and when the state of things in Washington Square seemed intolerable, she closed her eyes and indulged herself with an intellectual vision of the man for whose sake she had broken a sacred law. Mrs. Penniman, of the three persons in Washington Square, had much the most of the manner that belongs to a great crisis.
"Said that she loved him? Do you mean that?" Mrs. Penniman fixed her eyes on the floor. "As I tell you, Austin, she doesn't confide in me." "You have an opinion, I suppose, all the same. It is that I ask you for; though I don't conceal from you that I shall not regard it as conclusive." Mrs.
"I am delighted he is not to marry her," said Mrs. Almond, "but he ought to be horsewhipped all the same." Mrs. Penniman, who was shocked at her sister's coarseness, replied that he had been actuated by the noblest of motives the desire not to impoverish Catherine. "I am very happy that Catherine is not to be impoverished but I hope he may never have a penny too much!
Only Judge Penniman remained to be startled; and he, being irritated that others had enjoyed a foreknowledge guiltily withheld from him, chose to pretend that he, too, had been mysteriously enlightened. He had, he said, seen the thing coming.
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