It seemed to her, later, in looking back upon all this, that for days
afterwards not a word had been exchanged between them. The scene had
been a strange one, but it had not permanently affected her feeling
towards her father, for it was natural, after all, that he should
occasionally make a scene of some kind, and he had let her alone for
six months. The strangest part of it was that he had said he was not
a good man; Catherine wondered a great deal what he had meant by
that. The statement failed to appeal to her credence, and it was not
grateful to any resentment that she entertained. Even in the utmost
bitterness that she might feel, it would give her no satisfaction to
think him less complete. Such a saying as that was a part of his
great subtlety--men so clever as he might say anything and mean
anything. And as to his being hard, that surely, in a man, was a
virtue.
He let her alone for six months more--six months during which she
accommodated herself without a protest to the extension of their
tour. But he spoke again at the end of this time; it was at the very
last, the night before they embarked for New York, in the hotel at
Liverpool. They had been dining together in a great dim, musty
sitting-room; and then the cloth had been removed, and the Doctor
walked slowly up and down. Catherine at last took her candle to go
to bed, but her father motioned her to stay.
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