_Chapter V_
While this ecclesiastical idyl was painting and singing itself in its
own way, blind and deaf to the realities of life, this life moved on in
its accustomed course undisturbed by idyls. The morning's task was
always finished at one o'clock. At that hour, if the weather was fine,
Mr. Dudley commonly stopped at the church door to take them away, and
the rest of the day was given up to society. Esther and Catherine drove,
made calls, dined out, went to balls, to the theater and opera, without
interrupting their professional work. Under Mrs. Murray's potent
influence, Catherine glided easily into the current of society and
became popular without an effort. She soon had admirers. One young man,
of an excellent and very old Dutch family, Mr. Rip Van Dam, took a
marked fancy for her. Mr. Van Dam knew nothing of her, except that she
was very pretty and came from Colorado where she had been brought up to
like horses, and could ride almost any thing that would not buck its
saddle off. This was quite enough for Mr. Van Dam whose taste for horses
was more decided than for literature or art. He took Catherine to drive
when the sleighing was good, and was flattered by her enthusiastic
admiration of his beautiful pair of fast trotters. His confidence in her
became boundless when he found that she could drive them quite as well
as he. His success in winning her affections would have been greater if
Catherine had not found his charms incessantly counteracted by the
society of the older and more intelligent men, whom she never met at
balls, but whom she saw every morning at the church, and whose tastes
and talk struck her imagination.
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