Mrs. Penniman was scared and bewildered; she saw no prospect of
introducing her little account of the purity of Morris's motives.
"You are a most ungrateful girl!" she cried. "Do you scold me for
talking with him? I am sure we never talked of anything but you!"
"Yes; and that was the way you worried him; you made him tired of my
very name! I wish you had never spoken of me to him; I never asked
your help!"
"I am sure if it hadn't been for me he would never have come to the
house, and you would never have known what he thought of you," Mrs.
Penniman rejoined, with a good deal of justice.
"I wish he never had come to the house, and that I never had known
it! That's better than this," said poor Catherine.
"You are a very ungrateful girl," Aunt Lavinia repeated.
Catherine's outbreak of anger and the sense of wrong gave her, while
they lasted, the satisfaction that comes from all assertion of force;
they hurried her along, and there is always a sort of pleasure in
cleaving the air. But at the bottom she hated to be violent, and she
was conscious of no aptitude for organised resentment. She calmed
herself with a great effort, but with great rapidity, and walked
about the room a few moments, trying to say to herself that her aunt
had meant everything for the best. She did not succeed in saying it
with much conviction, but after a little she was able to speak
quietly enough.
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