WASHINGTON SQUARE.
87
"Is she so hard!" asked Mrs. Penniman.
"She doesn't care a button for me—with her confounded little dry manner."
"Was it very dry?" pursued Mrs. Penniman, with solicitude.
Morris took no notice of her question; he stood musing an instant, with his hat on. "But why the deuce, then, would she never marry?"
"Yes why indeed?" sighed Mrs. Penniman. And then, as if from a sense of the inadequacy of this explanation, "But you will not despair—you will come back?"
"Come back? Damnation!" And Morris Townsend strode out of the house, leaving Mrs. Penniman staring.
Catherine, meanwhile, in the parlour, picking up her morsel of fancy-work, had seated herself with it again—for life, as it were.
