under his own roof, which Lavinia accepted with the alacrity of a
woman who had spent the ten years of her married life in the town of
Poughkeepsie. The Doctor had not proposed to Mrs. Penniman to come
and live with him indefinitely; he had suggested that she should make
an asylum of his house while she looked about for unfurnished
lodgings. It is uncertain whether Mrs. Penniman ever instituted a
search for unfurnished lodgings, but it is beyond dispute that she
never found them. She settled herself with her brother and never
went away, and when Catherine was twenty years old her Aunt Lavinia
was still one of the most striking features of her immediate
entourage. Mrs. Penniman's own account of the matter was that she
had remained to take charge of her niece's education. She had given
this account, at least, to every one but the Doctor, who never asked
for explanations which he could entertain himself any day with
inventing. Mrs. Penniman, moreover, though she had a good deal of a
certain sort of artificial assurance, shrank, for indefinable
reasons, from presenting herself to her brother as a fountain of
instruction. She had not a high sense of humour, but she had enough
to prevent her from making this mistake; and her brother, on his
side, had enough to excuse her, in her situation, for laying him
under contribution during a considerable part of a lifetime. He
therefore assented tacitly to the proposition which Mrs. Penniman had
tacitly laid down, that it was of importance that the poor motherless
girl should have a brilliant woman near her. His assent could only
be tacit, for he had never been dazzled by his sister's intellectual
lustre. Save when he fell in love with Catherine Harrington, he had
never been dazzled, indeed, by any feminine characteristics whatever;
and though he was to a certain extent what is called a ladies'
doctor, his private opinion of the more complicated sex was not
exalted. He regarded its complications as more curious than