the first opportunity. The doctor was never eager, never impatient or nervous; but he made notes of everything, and he regularly consulted his notes. Among them the information he obtained from Mrs. Almond about Morris Townsend took its place.
âLavinia has already been to ask me,â she said. âLavinia is most excited; I donât understand it. Itâs not, after all, Lavinia that the young man is supposed to have designs upon. She is very peculiar.â
âAh, my dear,â the doctor replied, âshe has not lived with me these twelve years without my finding it out.â
âShe has got such an artificial mind,â said Mrs. Almond, who always enjoyed an opportunity to discuss Laviniaâs peculiarities with her brother. âShe didnât want me to tell you that she had asked me about Mr. Townsend; but I told her I would. She always wants to conceal everything.â
âAnd yet at moments no one blurts things out with such crudity. She is like a revolving lighthouseâpitch darkness alternating with a dazzling brilliancy! But what did you tell her?â the doctor asked.
âWhat I tell youâthat I know very little of him.â
âLavinia must have been disappointed at that,â said the doctor. âShe would prefer him to have been guilty of some romantic crime. However, we must make the best of people. They tell me our gentleman is the cousin of the little boy to whom you are about to entrust the future of your little girl.â
âArthur is not a little boy; he is a very old man; you and I will never be so old! He is a distant relation of Laviniaâs protégé. The name is the same, but I am given to understand that there are Townsends and Townsends. So Arthurâs mother tells me; she talked about âbranchesââyounger branches, elder branches, inferior branchesâas if it were a royal house. Arthur, it appears, is of the reigning line, but poor Laviniaâs young man is not. Beyond this, Arthurâs mother knows very little about him; she has only a vague story that he has been âwild.â But I know his sister a little, and she is a very nice woman. Her name is Mrs. Montgomery; she is a widow, with a little property and five children. She lives in the Second Avenue.â
âWhat does Mrs. Montgomery say about him?â
âThat he has talents by which he might distinguish himself.â
âOnly he is lazy, eh?â
âShe doesnât say so.â
âThatâs family pride,â said the doctor. âWhat is his profession?â
âHe hasnât got any; he is looking for something. I believe he was once in the navy.â
âOnce? What is his age?â
âI suppose he is upward of thirty. He must have gone into the navy very young. I think Arthur told me that he inherited a small propertyâwhich was perhaps the cause of his leaving the navyâand that he spent it all in a few years. He traveled all over the world, lived abroad, amused himself. I believe it was a kind of system, a theory he had. He has lately come back to America with the intention, as he tells Arthur, of beginning life in earnest.â
âIs he in earnest about Catherine, then?â
âI donât see why you should be incredulous,â said Mrs. Almond. âIt seems to me that you have never done Catherine justice. You must remember that she has the prospect of thirty thousand a year.â
The doctor looked at his sister a moment, and then, with lightest touch of bitterness, âYou at least appreciate her,â he said.
Mrs. Almond blushed.
âI donât mean that is her only merit; I simply mean that it is a great one. A great many young men think so; and you appear to me never to have been properly aware of that. You have always had a little way of alluding to her as an unmarriageable girl.â
âMy allusions are as kind as yours, Elizabeth,â said the doctor,