For some time catherine made no answer,
but finally she said, “i think Morris—little by
little—might persuade you.”
“i shall never let him speak to me again. i
dislike him too much.”
catherine gave a long, low sigh; she tried to
stifle it, for she had made up her mind that it was
wrong to make a parade of her trouble and to
endeavor to act upon her father by the meretricious aid of emotion. indeed, she even thought it
wrong—in the sense of being inconsiderate—to
attempt to act upon his feelings at all; her part
was to effect some gentle, gradual change in his
intellectual perception of poor Morris’ character.
But the means of effecting such a change were at
Whoever curses father or mother shall be put to
death. —Book of Exodus
present shrouded in mystery, and she felt miserably helpless and hopeless. she had exhausted
all arguments, all replies. her father might have
pitied her, and in fact he did so; but he was sure
he was right.
“There is one thing you can tell Mr.
townsend, when you see him again,” he said,
“that if you marry without my consent, i don’t
leave you a farthing of money. That will interest
him more than anything else you can tell him.”
“That would be very right,” catherine an-
swered. “i ought not in that case to have a far-
thing of your money.”
“My dear child,” the doctor observed,
laughing, “your simplicity is touching. Make
that remark, in that tone, and with that expres-
sion of countenance, to Mr.townsend, and take
a note of his answer. it won’t be polite—it will
express irritation, and i shall be glad of that,
as it will put me in the right; unless, indeed—
which is perfectly possible—you should like
him the better for being rude to you.”
“he will never be rude to me,” said cath-
erine, gently.
“tell him what i say, all the same.”
“i think i will see him, then,” she mur-
mured, in her timid voice.
From Washington square. James was born in 1843,
and by his midtwenties was considered one of the
leading American short-story writers. He published
daisy Miller in 1879, The portrait of a lady in
1881, and The Bostonians in 1886. Bedridden and
sometimes delirious in the winter of 1915, James
requested that his secretary take dictation because,
he said, he would “discover plenty of fresh worlds to
conquer, even if I am to be cheated of the amusement
of them.” He died the following year.
