SECTION B: PROSE HENRY JAMES: Washington Square Remember to support your ideas with details from the writing. Either 13 Read this passage, and then answer the question that follows it: 'My plans have not changed!' said Catherine, with a little laugh. 'Ah, but Mr Townsend's have,' her aunt answered very gently. 'What do you mean?' There was an imperious brevity in the tone of this inquiry, against which Mrs Penniman felt bound to protest; the information with which she had undertaken to supply her niece was after all a favour. She had tried sharpness, and she had sternness; but neither would do; she was shocked at the girl's obstinacy. 'Ah, well,' she said, 'if he hasn't told you!...' and she turned away. Catherine watched her a moment in silence; then she hurried after her, stopping her before she reached the door. 'Told me what? What do you mean? What are you hinting at and threatening me with?' 'Isn't it broken off?' asked Mrs Penniman. 'My engagement? Not in the least!' 'I beg your pardon in that case. I have spoken too soon!' 'Too soon! Soon or late,' Catherine broke out, 'you speak foolishly and cruelly!' 'What has happened between you then?' asked her aunt struck by the sincerity of this cry. 'For something certainly has happened.' 'Nothing has happened but that I love him more and more!' Mrs Penniman was silent an instant. 'I suppose that's the reason you went to see him this afternoon.' Catherine flushed as if she had been struck. 'Yes, I did go to see him! But that's my own business.' 'Very well, then; we won't talk about it.' And Mrs Penniman moved towards the door again. But she was stopped by a sudden imploring cry from the girl. 'Aunt Lavinia, where has he gone?' 'Ah, you admit then that he has gone away? Didn't they know at his house?' 'They said he had left town. I asked no more questions; I was ashamed,' said Catherine simply enough. 'You needn't have taken so compromising a step if you had had a little more confidence in me,' Mrs Penniman observed, with a good deal of grandeur. 'Is it to New Orleans!' Catherine went on, irrelevantly. It was the first time Mrs Penniman had heard of New Orleans in this connection; but she was averse to letting Catherine know that she was in the dark. She attempted to strike an illumination from the instructions she had received from Morris. 'My dear Catherine,' she said, 'when a separation has been agreed upon, the farther he goes away the better.' 'Agreed upon? Has he agreed upon it with you?' A consummate sense of her aunt's meddlesome folly had come over her during the last five minutes, and she was sickened at the thought that Mrs Penniman had been let loose, as it were, upon her happiness. 'He certainly has sometimes advised with me,' said Mrs Penniman. 'Is it you then that have changed him and made him so unnatural?' Catherine cried. 'Is it you that have worked on him and taken him from me! He doesn't belong to you, and I don't see how you have anything to do with what is between us! Is it you that have made this plot and told him to leave me? How could you be so wicked, so cruel? What have I ever done to you; why can't you leave me alone? I was afraid you would spoil everything; for you do spoil everything you touch! I was afraid of you all the time we were abroad; I had no rest when I thought that you were always talking to him.' Catherine went on with growing vehemence, pouring out in her bitterness and in the clairvoyance of her passion (which suddenly, jumping all processes, made her judge her aunt finally and without appeal), the uneasiness which had lain for so many months upon her heart. (from Chapter 30)