Austen Said:

“But perhaps it might be more agreeable to her to make those her first object. The weather was at present favourable, and at this time of year the uncertainty was very great of its continuing so. Which would she prefer? He was equally at her service. Which did his daughter think would most accord with her fair friend’s wishes? But he thought he could discern. Yes, he certainly read in Miss Morland’s eyes a judicious desire of making use of the present smiling weather. But when did she judge amiss? The abbey would be always safe and dry. He yielded implicitly, and would fetch his hat and attend them in a moment.”

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.

“without any ambition of that sort himself — without any solicitude about it — he did believe them to be unrivalled in the kingdom. If he had a hobby-horse, it was that. He loved a garden. Though careless enough in most matters of eating, he loved good fruit — or if he did not, his friends and children did. There were great vexations, however, attending such a garden as his. The utmost care could not always secure the most valuable fruits. The pinery had yielded only one hundred in the last year. Mr. Allen, he supposed, must feel these inconveniences as well as himself.”

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

he could do the same, for he never entered his, without being vexed in some way or other, by its falling short of his plan.

“How were Mr. Allen’s succession-houses worked?”

“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.”

“The rays of the sun were not too cheerful for him, and he would meet them by another course.”

“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.

He would follow them in a quarter of an hour.

a strict charge against taking her friend round the abbey till his return.

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

the real drawing-room, used only with company of consequence.

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

with the addition of the kitchen, the six or seven rooms she had now seen surrounded three sides of the court,

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;

she was treading what had once been a cloister,

if he had a vanity, it was in the arrangement of his offices;

to a mind like Miss Morland’s, a view of the accommodations and comforts, by which the labours of her inferiors were softened, must always be gratifying, he should make no apology for leading her on.

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;

ventured to hope that henceforward some of their earliest tenants might be

whither she were going? — And what was there more to be seen? — Had not Miss Morland already seen all that could be worth her notice? — And did she not suppose her friend might be glad of some refreshment after so much exercise?

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;

“I was going to take you into what was my mother’s room — the room in which she died — “

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;

to attend her there, whenever they should have a convenient hour.

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.

The latter was not going to retire.

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,