In the large
room, where several different groups had been formed, and the hum of
voices and of laughter was loud, these two young persons might
confabulate, as the Doctor phrased it to himself, without attracting
attention. He saw in a moment, however, that his daughter was
painfully conscious of his own observation. She sat motionless, with
her eyes bent down, staring at her open fan, deeply flushed,
shrinking together as if to minimise the indiscretion of which she
confessed herself guilty.
The Doctor almost pitied her. Poor Catherine was not defiant; she
had no genius for bravado; and as she felt that her father viewed her
companion's attentions with an unsympathising eye, there was nothing
but discomfort for her in the accident of seeming to challenge him.
The Doctor felt, indeed, so sorry for her that he turned away, to
spare her the sense of being watched; and he was so intelligent a man
that, in his thoughts, he rendered a sort of poetic justice to her
situation.
"It must be deucedly pleasant for a plain inanimate girl like that to
have a beautiful young fellow come and sit down beside her and
whisper to her that he is her slave--if that is what this one
whispers. No wonder she likes it, and that she thinks me a cruel
tyrant; which of course she does, though she is afraid--she hasn't
the animation necessary--to admit it to herself. Poor old
Catherine!" mused the Doctor; "I verily believe she is capable of
defending me when Townsend abuses me!"
And the force of this reflexion, for the moment, was such in making
him feel the natural opposition between his point of view and that of
an infatuated child, that he said to himself that he was perhaps,
after all, taking things too hard and crying out before he was hurt.
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