Austen Said:

He turned away; and Catherine was shocked to find how much her spirits were relieved by the separation. The shock, however, being less real than the relief, offered it no injury; and she began to talk with easy gaiety of the delightful melancholy which such a grove inspired.

“I am particularly fond of this spot,”

said her companion, with a sigh.

“It was my mother’s favourite walk.”

Catherine had never heard Mrs. Tilney mentioned in the family before, and the interest excited by this tender remembrance showed itself directly in her altered countenance, and in the attentive pause with which she waited for something more.

“I used to walk here so often with her!”

added Eleanor;

“though I never loved it then, as I have loved it since. At that time indeed I used to wonder at her choice. But her memory endears it now.”

“And ought it not,”

reflected Catherine,

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

Miss Tilney continuing silent, she ventured to say,

“Her death must have been a great affliction!”

“A great and increasing one,”

replied the other, in a low voice.

“I was only thirteen when it happened; and though I felt my loss perhaps as strongly as one so young could feel it, I did not, I could not, then know what a loss it was.”

She stopped for a moment, and then added, with great firmness,

“I have no sister, you know — and though Henry — though my brothers are very affectionate, and Henry is a great deal here, which I am most thankful for, it is impossible for me not to be often solitary.”

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

“A mother would have been always present. A mother would have been a constant friend; her influence would have been beyond all other.”

“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?”

— were questions now eagerly poured forth; the first three received a ready affirmative, the two others were passed by; and Catherine’s interest in the deceased Mrs. Tilney augmented with every question, whether answered or not.

Of her unhappiness in marriage, she felt persuaded.

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.

“Her picture, I suppose,”

blushing at the consummate art of her own question,

“hangs in your father’s room?”

“No; it was intended for the drawing-room; but my father was dissatisfied with the painting, and for some time it had no place. Soon after her death I obtained it for my own, and hung it in my bed-chamber — where I shall be happy to show it you; it is very like."

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!

Catherine attempted no longer to hide from herself

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

to her.

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.

She had just settled this point when the end of the path brought them directly upon the general; and in spite of all her virtuous indignation, she found herself again obliged to walk with him, listen to him, and even to smile when he smiled. Being no longer able, however, to receive pleasure from the surrounding objects, she soon began to walk with lassitude; the general perceived it, and with a concern for her health, which seemed to reproach her for her opinion of him, was most urgent for returning with his daughter to the house.

He would follow them in a quarter of an hour.

Again they parted — but

Eleanor was called back in half a minute to receive

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

This second instance of his anxiety to delay what she so much wished for struck Catherine as very remarkable.

An hour passed away before the general came in, spent, on the part of his young guest, in no very favourable consideration of his character.

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

At length he appeared; and, whatever might have been the gloom of his meditations, he could still smile with them. Miss Tilney, understanding in part her friend’s curiosity to see the house, soon revived the subject; and her father being, contrary to Catherine’s expectations, unprovided with any pretence for further delay, beyond that of stopping five minutes to order refreshments to be in the room by their return, was at last ready to escort them.

They set forward; and, with a grandeur of air, a dignified step, which caught the eye, but could not shake the doubts of the well-read Catherine, he led the way across the hall, through the common drawing-room and one useless antechamber, into a room magnificent both in size and furniture —

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

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

was all

that Catherine had to say,

for her indiscriminating eye scarcely discerned the colour of the satin; and all minuteness of praise, all praise that had much meaning, was supplied by the general: the costliness or elegance of any room’s fitting-up could be nothing to her; she cared for no furniture of a more modern date than the fifteenth century. When the general had satisfied his own curiosity, in a close examination of every well-known ornament, they proceeded into the library, an apartment, in its way, of equal magnificence, exhibiting a collection of books, on which an humble man might have looked with pride. Catherine heard, admired, and wondered with more genuine feeling than before — gathered all that she could from this storehouse of knowledge, by running over the titles of half a shelf, and was ready to proceed. But suites of apartments did not spring up with her wishes. Large as was the building, she had already visited the greatest part; though, on

being told that,