But she went on. "I am not even--I am not even--" And she paused a
moment.
"You are not what?"
"I am not even brave."
"Ah, then, if you are afraid, what shall we do?"
She hesitated a while; then at last--"You must come to the house,"
she said; "I am not afraid of that."
"I would rather it were in the Square," the young man urged. "You
know how empty it is, often. No one will see us."
"I don't care who sees us! But leave me now."
He left her resignedly; he had got what he wanted. Fortunately he
was ignorant that half an hour later, going home with her father and
feeling him near, the poor girl, in spite of her sudden declaration
of courage, began to tremble again. Her father said nothing; but she
had an idea his eyes were fixed upon her in the darkness. Mrs.
Penniman also was silent; Morris Townsend had told her that her niece
preferred, unromantically, an interview in a chintz-covered parlour
to a sentimental tryst beside a fountain sheeted with dead leaves,
and she was lost in wonderment at the oddity--almost the perversity--
of the choice.
CHAPTER X
Catherine received the young man the next day on the ground she had
chosen--amid the chaste upholstery of a New York drawing-room
furnished in the fashion of fifty years ago. Morris had swallowed
his pride and made the effort necessary to cross the threshold of her
too derisive parent--an act of magnanimity which could not fail to
render him doubly interesting.
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