"Is it to New Orleans?" Catherine went on irrelevantly.
It was the first time Mrs. Penniman had heard of New Orleans in this
connexion; but she was averse to letting Catherine know that she was
in the dark. She attempted to strike an illumination from the
instructions she had received from Morris. "My dear Catherine," she
said, "when a separation has been agreed upon, the farther he goes
away the better."
"Agreed upon? Has he agreed upon it with you?" A consummate sense
of her aunt's meddlesome folly had come over her during the last five
minutes, and she was sickened at the thought that Mrs. Penniman had
been let loose, as it were, upon her happiness.
"He certainly has sometimes advised with me," said Mrs. Penniman.
"Is it you, then, that have changed him and made him so unnatural?"
Catherine cried. "Is it you that have worked on him and taken him
from me? He doesn't belong to you, and I don't see how you have
anything to do with what is between us! Is it you that have made
this plot and told him to leave me? How could you be so wicked, so
cruel? What have I ever done to you; why can't you leave me alone?
I was afraid you would spoil everything; for you DO spoil everything
you touch; I was afraid of you all the time we were abroad; I had no
rest when I thought that you were always talking to him." Catherine
went on with growing vehemence, pouring out in her bitterness and in
the clairvoyance of her passion (which suddenly, jumping all
processes, made her judge her aunt finally and without appeal) the
uneasiness which had lain for so many months upon her heart.
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