Austen Said:

“Yes; but besides your affection for her, you must be so fond of the abbey! After being used to such a home as the abbey, an ordinary parsonage-house must be very disagreeable.”

“To be sure, I have. Is not it a fine old place, just like what one reads about?”

“Oh! yes — I do not think I should be easily frightened, because there would be so many people in the house — and besides, it has never been uninhabited and left deserted for years, and then the family come back to it unawares, without giving any notice, as generally happens.”

“Oh! But this will not happen to me, I am sure.”

“Oh! Mr. Tilney, how frightful! This is just like a book! But it cannot really happen to me. I am sure your housekeeper is not really Dorothy. Well, what then?”

“No, indeed; I should be too much frightened to do any such thing.”

“Oh! No, no — do not say so. Well, go on.”

“This is strange indeed! I did not expect such a sight as this! An immense heavy chest! What can it hold? Why should it be placed here? Pushed back too, as if meant to be out of sight! I will look into it — cost me what it may, I will look into it — and directly too — by daylight. If I stay till evening my candle may go out.”

“No, indeed,”

“Mr. Allen’s dining-parlour was not more than half as large,”

“How much better is this,”

“how much better to find a fire ready lit, than to have to wait shivering in the cold till all the family are in bed, as so many poor girls have been obliged to do, and then to have a faithful old servant frightening one by coming in with a faggot! How glad I am that Northanger is what it is! If it had been like some other places, I do not know that, in such a night as this, I could have answered for my courage: but now, to be sure, there is nothing to alarm one.”

“But we have a charming morning after it,”

“and storms and sleeplessness are nothing when they are over. What beautiful hyacinths! I have just learnt to love a hyacinth.”

“Your sister taught me; I cannot tell how. Mrs. Allen used to take pains, year after year, to make me like them; but I never could, till I saw them the other day in Milsom Street; I am naturally indifferent about flowers.”

“But I do not want any such pursuit to get me out of doors. The pleasure of walking and breathing fresh air is enough for me, and in fine weather I am out more than half my time.

Mamma says

“Is it a pretty place?”

“And ought it not,”

“to endear it to her husband? Yet the general would not enter it.”

“Her death must have been a great affliction!”

“To be sure you must miss him very much.”

“Her picture, I suppose,”

“hangs in your father’s room?”

“It remains as it was, I suppose?”

“And how long ago may it be that your mother died?”

“You were with her, I suppose, to the last?”

“So much the worse!”

“Mr. Tilney!”

“Good God!”

“How came you here? How came you up that staircase?”

“I have been,”

“to see your mother’s room.”

“No, nothing at all. I thought you did not mean to come back till tomorrow.”

“No, I was not. You have had a very fine day for your ride.”

“Oh! No; she showed me over the greatest part on Saturday — and we were coming here to these rooms — but only”

“your father was with us.”

“No, I only wanted to see — Is not it very late? I must go and dress.”

“No, and I am very much surprised. Isabella promised so faithfully to write directly.”

“No.”

“Yes, a great deal. That is — no, not much, but what she did say was very interesting. Her dying so suddenly”

“and you — none of you being at home — and your father, I thought — perhaps had not been very fond of her.”

“But your father,”

“was he afflicted?”

“I am very glad of it,”

“it would have been very shocking!”

“’Tis only from James, however,”

“No, I thank you”

“they are all very well. My letter was from my brother at Oxford.”

“It contained something worse than anybody could suppose! Poor James is so unhappy! You will soon know why.”