"Lucy Lennox! I am astonished!" was all Morris could say, as the tinge
of wounded pride dyed his cheek.

Kate was a connection--distant, it is true; but his blood was in her
veins, and his inborn pride shrank from receiving so much from
strangers, while he wondered at her mother, feeling more and more
convinced that what he had so long suspected was literally true. Mrs.
Lennox was weak, Mrs. Lennox was ambitious, and for the sake of
associating her daughter with people whom the world had placed above
her she would stoop to accept that upon which she had no claim.

"Mrs. Woodhull was so urgent and so fond of Katy; and then, I thought it
well to give her the advantage of being with such people as compose that
party, the very first in Canandaigua, besides some from New York," Mrs.
Lennox began in self-defense, but Morris did not stop to hear more, and
hurried off a second time, while Mrs. Lennox looked after him, wondering
at the feeling which she called pride, and which she could not
understand. "If Katy can go with the Woodhulls and their set, I
certainly shall not prevent it," she thought, as she continued her
arrangement of the parlor, wishing so much that it was more like what
she remembered Mrs. Woodhull's to have been, fifteen years ago.

Of course that lady had kept up with the times, and if her old house was
finer than anything Mrs. Lennox had ever seen, what must her new one be,
with all the modern improvements? and, leaning her head upon the mantel,
Mrs. Lennox thought how proud she would be could she live to see her
daughter in similar circumstances to the envied Mrs. Woodhull, at that
moment in the crowded car between Boston and Silverton, tired, hot, and
dusty, worn out, and as nearly cross as a fashionable lady can be.