Part 18

“That you should take too much care would be quite as bad as that you should take too little. Catherine might suffer as much by your economy as by your extravagance.”

“I think you are very unjust!” The young man made this declaration decently, civilly, without violence.

“It is your privilege to think so, and I surrender my reputation to you! I certainly don’t flatter myself I gratify you.”

“Don’t you care a little to gratify your daughter? Do you enjoy the idea of making her miserable?”

“I am perfectly resigned to her thinking me a tyrant for a twelvemonth.”

“For a twelvemonth!” exclaimed Morris, with a laugh.

“For a lifetime, then! She may as well be miserable in that way as in the other.”

Here at last Morris lost his temper. “Ah, you are not polite, sir!” he cried.

“You push me to it—you argue too much.”

“I have a great deal at stake.”

“Well, whatever it is,” said the Doctor, “you have lost it!”

“Are you sure of that?” asked Morris; “are you sure your daughter will give me up?”

“I mean, of course, you have lost it as far as I am concerned. As for Catherine’s giving you up—no, I am not sure of it. But as I shall strongly recommend it, as I have a great fund of respect and affection in my daughter’s mind to draw upon, and as she has the sentiment of duty developed in a very high degree, I think it extremely possible.”

Morris Townsend began to smooth his hat again. “I too have a fund of affection to draw upon!” he observed at last.

The Doctor at this point showed his own first symptoms of irritation. “Do you mean to defy me?”

“Call it what you please, sir! I mean not to give your daughter up.”

The Doctor shook his head. “I haven’t the least fear of your pining away your life. You are made to enjoy it.”

Morris gave a laugh. “Your opposition to my marriage is all the more cruel, then! Do you intend to forbid your daughter to see me again?”

“She is past the age at which people are forbidden, and I am not a father in an old-fashioned novel. But I shall strongly urge her to break with you.”

“I don’t think she will,” said Morris Townsend.

“Perhaps not. But I shall have done what I could.”

“She has gone too far,” Morris went on.

“To retreat? Then let her stop where she is.”

“Too far to stop, I mean.”

The Doctor looked at him a moment; Morris had his hand on the door. “There is a great deal of impertinence in your saying it.”

“I will say no more, sir!” Morris answered; and, making his bow, he left the room.

XIII

IT may be thought the Doctor was too positive, and Mrs. Almond intimated as much. But, as he said, he had his impression; it seemed to him sufficient, and he had no wish to modify it. He had passed his life in estimating people (it was part of the medical trade), and in nineteen cases out of twenty he was right.