“Yes, Aunt Penniman would like that,” Catherine said simply—and yet with a certain shrewdness. It must, however, have been in pure simplicity, and from motives quite untouched by sarcasm, that, a few moments after, she went on to say to Morris that her father had given her a message for him. It was quite on her conscience to deliver this message, and had the mission been ten times more painful she would have as scrupulously performed it. “He told me to tell you—to tell you very distinctly, and directly from himself, that if I marry without his consent, I shall not inherit a penny of his fortune. He made a great point of this. He seemed to think—he seemed to think—” Morris flushed, as any young man of spirit might have flushed at an imputation of baseness. “What did he seem to think?” “That it would make a difference.” “It _will_ make a difference—in many things. We shall be by many thousands of dollars the poorer; and that is a great difference. But it will make none in my affection.” “We shall not want the money,” said Catherine; “for you know I have a good deal myself.” “Yes, my dear girl, I know you have something. And he can’t touch that!” “He would never,” said Catherine. “My mother left it to me.” Morris was silent a while. “He was very positive about this, was he?” he asked at last. “He thought such a message would annoy me terribly, and make me throw off the mask, eh?” “I don’t know what he thought,” said Catherine wearily. “Please tell him that I care for his message as much as for that!” And Morris snapped his fingers sonorously. “I don’t think I could tell him that.” “Do you know you sometimes disappoint me?” said Morris. “I should think I might. I disappoint every one—father and Aunt Penniman.” “Well, it doesn’t matter with me, because I am fonder of you than they are.” “Yes, Morris,” said the girl, with her imagination—what there was of it—swimming in this happy truth, which seemed, after all, invidious to no one. “Is it your belief that he will stick to it—stick to it for ever, to this idea of disinheriting you?—that your goodness and patience will never wear out his cruelty?” “The trouble is that if I marry you, he will think I am not good. He will think that a proof.” “Ah, then, he will never forgive you!” This idea, sharply expressed by Morris’s handsome lips, renewed for a moment, to the poor girl’s temporarily pacified conscience, all its dreadful vividness. “Oh, you must love me very much!” she cried. “There is no doubt of that, my dear!” her lover rejoined. “You don’t like that word ‘disinherited,’” he added in a moment. “It isn’t the money; it is that he should—that he should feel so.”