Austen Said:

till the possibility of the door’s having been at first unlocked, and of being herself its fastener,

For the world would she not have her weakness suspected,

the wind had kept her awake a little.

it was a proposal of too much happiness in itself, under any circumstances, not to be gladly accepted; for she had been already eighteen hours in the abbey, and had seen only a few of its rooms.

her unwillingness that he should be taking them out of doors against his own inclination, under a mistaken idea of pleasing her;

Why was Miss Tilney embarrassed? Could there be any unwillingness on the general’s side to show her over the abbey? The proposal was his own. And was not it odd that he should always take his walk so early? Neither her father nor Mr. Allen did so. It was certainly very provoking.

She was all impatience to see the house, and had scarcely any curiosity about the grounds.

If Henry had been with them indeed! But now she should not know what was picturesque when she saw it.

“No, not at all. Mr. Allen did not care about the garden, and never went into it.”

“Mr. Allen had only one small hot-house, which Mrs. Allen had the use of for her plants in winter, and there was a fire in it now and then.”

“Was she a very charming woman? Was she handsome? Was there any picture of her in the abbey? And why had she been so partial to that grove? Was it from dejection of spirits?”

The general certainly had been an unkind husband. He did not love her walk: could he therefore have loved her? And besides, handsome as he was, there was a something in the turn of his features which spoke his not having behaved well to her.

Here was another proof. A portrait — very like — of a departed wife, not valued by the husband! He must have been dreadfully cruel to her!

the nature of the feelings which, in spite of all his attentions, he had previously excited; and what had been terror and dislike before, was now absolute aversion.

Yes, aversion! His cruelty to such a charming woman made him odious

She had often read of such characters, characters which Mr. Allen had been used to call unnatural and overdrawn; but here was proof positive of the contrary.

“This lengthened absence, these solitary rambles, did not speak a mind at ease, or a conscience void of reproach.”

It was very noble — very grand — very charming! —

they were to return to the rooms in common use, by passing through a few of less importance, looking into the court, which, with occasional passages, not wholly unintricate, connected the different sides;

Yet this was an abbey! How inexpressibly different in these domestic arrangements from such as she had read about — from abbeys and castles, in which, though certainly larger than Northanger, all the dirty work of the house was to be done by two pair of female hands at the utmost. How they could get through it all had often amazed Mrs. Allen;

she would rather be allowed to examine that end of the house than see all the finery of all the rest.

Something was certainly to be concealed; her fancy, though it had trespassed lately once or twice, could not mislead her here;

It was no wonder that the general should shrink from the sight of such objects as that room must contain; a room in all probability never entered by him since the dreadful scene had passed, which released his suffering wife, and left him to the stings of conscience.

her wish of being permitted to see it, as well as all the rest of that side of the house;

the general must be watched from home, before that room could be entered.

And nine years,

was a trifle of time, compared with what generally elapsed after the death of an injured wife, before her room was put to rights.

Could it be possible? Could Henry’s father —? And yet how many were the examples to justify even the blackest suspicions!

It was the air and attitude of a Montoni! What could more plainly speak the gloomy workings of a mind not wholly dead to every sense of humanity, in its fearful review of past scenes of guilt? Unhappy man!

such ill-timed exercise was of a piece with the strange unseasonableness of his morning walks, and boded nothing good.

To be kept up for hours, after the family were in bed, by stupid pamphlets was not very likely. There must be some deeper cause: something was to be done which could be done only while the household slept; and the probability that Mrs. Tilney yet lived, shut up for causes unknown, and receiving from the pitiless hands of her husband a nightly supply of coarse food,

Shocking as was the idea, it was at least better than a death unfairly hastened, as, in the natural course of things, she must ere long be released. The suddenness of her reputed illness, the absence of her daughter, and probably of her other children, at the time — all favoured the supposition of her imprisonment. Its origin — jealousy perhaps, or wanton cruelty — was yet to be unravelled.

not unlikely that she might that morning have passed near the very spot of this unfortunate woman’s confinement — might have been within a few paces of the cell in which she languished out her days; for what part of the abbey could be more fitted for the purpose than that which yet bore the traces of monastic division? In the high-arched passage, paved with stone, which already she had trodden with peculiar awe, she well remembered the doors of which the general had given no account. To what might not those doors lead?

the forbidden gallery, in which lay the apartments of the unfortunate Mrs. Tilney, must be, as certainly as her memory could guide her, exactly over this suspected range of cells, and the staircase by the side of those apartments of which she had caught a transient glimpse, communicating by some secret means with those cells, might well have favoured the barbarous proceedings of her husband.

Down that staircase she had perhaps been conveyed in a state of well-prepared insensibility!

if judiciously watched, some rays of light from the general’s lamp might glimmer through the lower windows, as he passed to the prison of his wife;

Till midnight,

it would be in vain to watch; but then, when the clock had struck twelve, and all was quiet, she would, if not quite appalled by darkness, steal out and look once more.

who must have been in some way or other her destroyer,

That the general, having erected such a monument, should be able to face it, was not perhaps very strange, and yet that he could sit so boldly collected within its view, maintain so elevated an air, look so fearlessly around, nay, that he should even enter the church,

Not, however, that many instances of beings equally hardened in guilt might not be produced.

dozens who had persevered in every possible vice, going on from crime to crime, murdering whomsoever they chose, without any feeling of humanity or remorse; till a violent death or a religious retirement closed their black career. The erection of the monument itself could not in the smallest degree affect her doubts of Mrs. Tilney’s actual decease. Were she even to descend into the family vault where her ashes were supposed to slumber, were she to behold the coffin in which they were said to be enclosed — what could it avail in such a case?

It would be much better in every respect that Eleanor should know nothing of the matter. To involve her in the danger of a second detection, to court her into an apartment which must wring her heart, could not be the office of a friend. The general’s utmost anger could not be to herself what it might be to a daughter; and, besides,

the examination itself would be more satisfactory if made without any companion. It would be impossible to explain to Eleanor the suspicions, from which the other had, in all likelihood, been hitherto happily exempt; nor could she therefore, in her presence, search for those proofs of the general’s cruelty, which however they might yet have escaped discovery, she felt confident of somewhere drawing forth, in the shape of some fragmented journal, continued to the last gasp.

She could not be mistaken as to the room; but how grossly mistaken in everything else! — in Miss Tilney’s meaning, in her own calculation!

Would the veil in which Mrs. Tilney had last walked, or the volume in which she had last read, remain to tell what nothing else was allowed to whisper? No: whatever might have been the general’s crimes, he had certainly too much wit to let them sue for detection.

It was not only with herself that she was sunk — but with Henry.

Her folly, which now seemed even criminal, was all exposed to him,

and he must despise her forever. The liberty which her imagination had dared to take with the character of his father — could he ever forgive it? The absurdity of her curiosity and her fears — could they ever be forgotten? She hated herself more than she could express. He had — she thought he had, once or twice before this fatal morning, shown something like affection for her. But now —

Charming as were all Mrs. Radcliffe’s works, and charming even as were the works of all her imitators, it was not in them perhaps that human nature, at least in the Midland counties of England, was to be looked for. Of the Alps and Pyrenees, with their pine forests and their vices, they might give a faithful delineation; and Italy, Switzerland, and the south of France might be as fruitful in horrors as they were there represented.