"I should like you to promise me something before I die."
"Why do you talk about your dying?" she asked.
"Because I am sixty-eight years old."
"I hope you will live a long time," said Catherine.
"I hope I shall! But some day I shall take a bad cold, and then it
will not matter much what any one hopes. That will be the manner of
my exit, and when it takes place, remember I told you so. Promise me
not to marry Morris Townsend after I am gone."
This was what made Catherine start, as I have said; but her start was
a silent one, and for some moments she said nothing. "Why do you
speak of him?" she asked at last.
"You challenge everything I say. I speak of him because he's a
topic, like any other. He's to be seen, like any one else, and he is
still looking for a wife--having had one and got rid of her, I don't
know by what means. He has lately been in New York, and at your
cousin Marian's house; your Aunt Elizabeth saw him there."
"They neither of them told me," said Catherine.
"That's their merit; it's not yours. He has grown fat and bald, and
he has not made his fortune. But I can't trust those facts alone to
steel your heart against him, and that's why I ask you to promise."
"Fat and bald": these words presented a strange image to Catherine's
mind, out of which the memory of the most beautiful young man in the
world had never faded. "I don't think you understand," she said.
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