"You must ACT, my dear; in
your situation the great thing is to act," said Mrs. Penniman, who
found her niece altogether beneath her opportunities. Mrs.
Penniman's real hope was that the girl would make a secret marriage,
at which she should officiate as brideswoman or duenna. She had a
vision of this ceremony being performed in some subterranean chapel--
subterranean chapels in New York were not frequent, but Mrs.
Penniman's imagination was not chilled by trifles--and of the guilty
couple--she liked to think of poor Catherine and her suitor as the
guilty couple--being shuffled away in a fast-whirling vehicle to some
obscure lodging in the suburbs, where she would pay them (in a thick
veil) clandestine visits, where they would endure a period of
romantic privation, and where ultimately, after she should have been
their earthly providence, their intercessor, their advocate, and
their medium of communication with the world, they should be
reconciled to her brother in an artistic tableau, in which she
herself should be somehow the central figure. She hesitated as yet
to recommend this course to Catherine, but she attempted to draw an
attractive picture of it to Morris Townsend. She was in daily
communication with the young man, whom she kept informed by letters
of the state of affairs in Washington Square. As he had been
banished, as she said, from the house, she no longer saw him; but she
ended by writing to him that she longed for an interview.
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