But I don't at all recognise your
description of Catherine. She doesn't strike me in the least as a
young woman going about in search of a moral poultice. In fact, she
seems to me much better than while the fellow was hanging about. She
is perfectly comfortable and blooming; she eats and sleeps, takes her
usual exercise, and overloads herself, as usual, with finery. She is
always knitting some purse or embroidering some handkerchief, and it
seems to me she turns these articles out about as fast as ever. She
hasn't much to say; but when had she anything to say? She had her
little dance, and now she is sitting down to rest. I suspect that,
on the whole, she enjoys it."
"She enjoys it as people enjoy getting rid of a leg that has been
crushed. The state of mind after amputation is doubtless one of
comparative repose."
"If your leg is a metaphor for young Townsend, I can assure you he
has never been crushed. Crushed? Not he! He is alive and perfectly
intact, and that's why I am not satisfied."
"Should you have liked to kill him?" asked Mrs. Almond.
"Yes, very much. I think it is quite possible that it is all a
blind."
"A blind?"
"An arrangement between them. Il fait le mort, as they say in
France; but he is looking out of the corner of his eye. You can
depend upon it he has not burned his ships; he has kept one to come
back in. When I am dead, he will set sail again, and then she will
marry him.
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