"I
should like to see you an honest man's wife before I die," he said.
This was after John Ludlow had been compelled to give it up, though
the Doctor had advised him to persevere. The Doctor exercised no
further pressure, and had the credit of not "worrying" at all over
his daughter's singleness. In fact he worried rather more than
appeared, and there were considerable periods during which he felt
sure that Morris Townsend was hidden behind some door. "If he is
not, why doesn't she marry?" he asked himself. "Limited as her
intelligence may be, she must understand perfectly well that she is
made to do the usual thing." Catherine, however, became an admirable
old maid. She formed habits, regulated her days upon a system of her
own, interested herself in charitable institutions, asylums,
hospitals, and aid societies; and went generally, with an even and
noiseless step, about the rigid business of her life. This life had,
however, a secret history as well as a public one--if I may talk of
the public history of a mature and diffident spinster for whom
publicity had always a combination of terrors. From her own point of
view the great facts of her career were that Morris Townsend had
trifled with her affection, and that her father had broken its
spring. Nothing could ever alter these facts; they were always
there, like her name, her age, her plain face. Nothing could ever
undo the wrong or cure the pain that Morris had inflicted on her, and
nothing could ever make her feel towards her father as she felt in
her younger years.
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