in New York it is possible for a young girl to occupy a primary one.
Catherine, who was extremely modest, had no desire to shine, and on
most social occasions, as they are called, you would have found her
lurking in the background. She was extremely fond of her father, and
very much afraid of him; she thought him the cleverest and handsomest
and most celebrated of men. The poor girl found her account so
completely in the exercise of her affections that the little tremor
of fear that mixed itself with her filial passion gave the thing an
extra relish rather than blunted its edge. Her deepest desire was to
please him, and her conception of happiness was to know that she had
succeeded in pleasing him. She had never succeeded beyond a certain
point. Though, on the whole, he was very kind to her, she was
perfectly aware of this, and to go beyond the point in question
seemed to her really something to live for. What she could not know,
of course, was that she disappointed him, though on three or four
occasions the Doctor had been almost frank about it. She grew up
peacefully and prosperously, but at the age of eighteen Mrs. Penniman
had not made a clever woman of her. Dr. Sloper would have liked to
be proud of his daughter; but there was nothing to be proud of in
poor Catherine. There was nothing, of course, to be ashamed of; but
this was not enough for the Doctor, who was a proud man and would
have enjoyed being able to think of his daughter as an unusual girl.
There would have been a fitness in her being pretty and graceful,
intelligent and distinguished; for her mother had been the most
charming woman of her little day, and as regards her father, of
course he knew his own value. He had moments of irritation at having
produced a commonplace child, and he even went so far at times as to
take a certain satisfaction in the thought that his wife had not
lived to find her out. He was naturally slow in making this
discovery himself, and it was not till Catherine had become a young