"
She turned away, feeling sick and faint; and the Doctor went on.
"And if you wait for it with impatience, judge, if you please, what
HIS eagerness will be!"
Catherine turned it over--her father's words had such an authority
for her that her very thoughts were capable of obeying him. There
was a dreadful ugliness in it, which seemed to glare at her through
the interposing medium of her own feebler reason. Suddenly, however,
she had an inspiration--she almost knew it to be an inspiration.
"If I don't marry before your death, I will not after," she said.
To her father, it must be admitted, this seemed only another epigram;
and as obstinacy, in unaccomplished minds, does not usually select
such a mode of expression, he was the more surprised at this wanton
play of a fixed idea.
"Do you mean that for an impertinence?" he inquired; an inquiry of
which, as he made it, he quite perceived the grossness.
"An impertinence? Oh, father, what terrible things you say!"
"If you don't wait for my death, you might as well marry immediately;
there is nothing else to wait for."
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 endeavour to act upon her father by the meretricious aid of
emotion.
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