'Oh, father!' cried the girl, still more faintly, devoutly thankful the carriage was dark.

'I don't know that; but he admired her dress.'

Catherine did not say to herself in the dark. 'My dress only?' Mrs Penniman's announcement struck her by its richness, not by its meagreness.

'You see,' said her father, 'he thinks you have eighty thousand a year.'

'I don't believe he thinks of that,' said Mrs Penniman; 'he is too refined.'

'He must be tremendously refined not to think of that!' 'Well, he is!' Catherine exclaimed, before she knew it.

'I thought you had gone to sleep,' her father answered. 'The hour has come!' he added to himself. 'Lavinia is going to get up a romance for Catherine. It's a shame to play such tricks on the girl. What is the gentleman's name?' he went on, aloud.

'I didn't catch it, and I didn't like to ask him. He asked to be introduced to me,' said Mrs Penniman, with a certain grandeur; 'but you know how indistinctly Jefferson speaks.' Jefferson was Mr Almond. 'Catherine, dear, what was the gentleman's name?'

For a minute, if it had not been for the rumbling of the carriage, you might have heard a pin drop.

'I don't know, Aunt Lavinia,' said Catherine, very softly. And, with all his irony, her father believed her.