She had striven to do so during the year that her brother left her an open field

It was a romantic interest in this attractive and unfortunate young man, and yet it was not such an interest as Catherine might have been jealous of.
Mrs. Penniman had not a particle of jealousy of her niece.
For herself, she felt as if she were Morris's mother or sister--a mother or sister of an emotional temperament--and she had an absorbing desire to make him comfortable and happy.
She had striven to do so during the year that her brother left her an open field, and her efforts had been attended with the success that has been pointed out.
She had never had a child of her own, and Catherine, whom she had done her best to invest with the importance that would naturally belong to a youthful Penniman, had only partly rewarded her zeal.
Catherine, as an object of affection and solicitude, had never had that picturesque charm which (as it seemed to her) would have been a natural attribute of her own progeny.
Even the maternal passion in Mrs. Penniman would have been romantic and factitious, and Catherine was not constituted to inspire a romantic passion.
Mrs. Penniman was as fond of her as ever, but she had grown to feel that with Catherine she lacked opportunity.
Sentimentally speaking, therefore, she had (though she had not disinherited her niece) adopted Morris Townsend, who gave her opportunity in abundance.
She would have been very happy to have a handsome and tyrannical son, and would have taken an extreme interest in his love affairs.
This was the light in which she had come to regard Morris, who had conciliated her at first, and made his impression by his delicate and calculated deference--a sort of exhibition to which Mrs. Penniman was particularly sensitive.
He had largely abated his deference afterwards, for he economised his resources, but the impression was made, and the young man's very brutality came to have a sort of filial value.
If Mrs. Penniman had had a son, she would probably have been afraid of him, and at this stage of our narrative she was certainly afraid of Morris Townsend.
This was one of the results of his domestication in Washington Square.
He took his ease with her--as, for that matter, he would certainly have done with his own mother.