My
letter was from my brother at Oxford.”

Nothing further was said for a few minutes; and then speaking through
her tears, she added, “I do not think I shall ever wish for a letter
again!”

“I am sorry,” said Henry, closing the book he had just opened; “if I
had suspected the letter of containing anything unwelcome, I should
have given it with very different feelings.”

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

“To have so kind-hearted, so affectionate a sister,” replied Henry
warmly, “must be a comfort to him under any distress.”

“I have one favour to beg,” said Catherine, shortly afterwards, in an
agitated manner, “that, if your brother should be coming here, you will
give me notice of it, that I may go away.”

“Our brother! frederick!”

“Yes; I am sure I should be very sorry to leave you so soon, but
something has happened that would make it very dreadful for me to be in
the same house with Captain Tilney.”

Eleanor’s work was suspended while she gazed with increasing
astonishment; but Henry began to suspect the truth, and something, in
which Miss Thorpe’s name was included, passed his lips. “How quick you are!” cried Catherine: “you have guessed it, I declare! And yet, when we talked about it in Bath, you little thought of its
ending so. Isabella—no wonder _now_ I have not heard from her—Isabella
has deserted my brother, and is to marry yours! could you have believed
there had been such inconstancy and fickleness, and everything that is
bad in the world?”

“I hope, so far as concerns my brother, you are misinformed. I hope he
has not had any material share in bringing on Mr. Morland’s
disappointment. His marrying Miss Thorpe is not probable. I think you
must be deceived so far. I am very sorry for Mr. Morland—sorry that
anyone you love should be unhappy; but my surprise would be greater at
Frederick’s marrying her than at any other part of the story.”

“It is very true, however; you shall read James’s letter yourself. Stay—There is one part—” recollecting with a blush the last line. “Will you take the trouble of reading to us the passages which concern
my brother?”

“No, read it yourself,” cried Catherine, whose second thoughts were
clearer. “I do not know what I was thinking of” (blushing again that
she had blushed before); “James only means to give me good advice.”

He gladly received the letter, and, having read it through, with close
attention, returned it saying, “Well, if it is to be so, I can only say
that I am sorry for it. Frederick will not be the first man who has
chosen a wife with less sense than his family expected. I do not envy
his situation, either as a lover or a son.”

Miss Tilney, at Catherine’s invitation, now read the letter likewise,
and, having expressed also her concern and surprise, began to inquire
into Miss Thorpe’s connections and fortune. “Her mother is a very good sort of woman,” was Catherine’s answer. “What was her father?”

“A lawyer, I believe. They live at Putney.”

“Are they a wealthy family?”

“No, not very. I do not believe Isabella has any fortune at all: but
that will not signify in your family. Your father is so very liberal! He told me the other day that he only valued money as it allowed him to
promote the happiness of his children.” The brother and sister looked
at each other. “But,” said Eleanor, after a short pause, “would it be
to promote his happiness, to enable him to marry such a girl? She must
be an unprincipled one, or she could not have used your brother so. And
how strange an infatuation on Frederick’s side! a girl who, before his
eyes, is violating an engagement voluntarily entered into with another
man! is not it inconceivable, Henry? Frederick too, who always wore his
heart so proudly! who found no woman good enough to be loved!”

“That is the most unpromising circumstance, the strongest presumption
against him. When I think of his past declarations, I give him up. Moreover, I have too good an opinion of Miss Thorpe’s prudence to
suppose that she would part with one gentleman before the other was
secured. It is all over with Frederick indeed! he is a deceased
man—defunct in understanding. Prepare for your sister-in-law, Eleanor,
and such a sister-in-law as you must delight in! open, candid, artless,
guileless, with affections strong but simple, forming no pretensions,
and knowing no disguise.”

“Such a sister-in-law, Henry, I should delight in,” said Eleanor with a
smile. “But perhaps,” observed Catherine, “though she has behaved so ill by
our family, she may behave better by yours. Now she has really got the
man she likes, she may be constant.”

“Indeed I am afraid she will,” replied Henry; “I am afraid she will be
very constant, unless a baronet should come in her way; that is
Frederick’s only chance. I will get the Bath paper, and look over the
arrivals.”

“You think it is all for ambition, then? And, upon my word, there are
some things that seem very like it. I cannot forget that, when she
first knew what my father would do for them, she seemed quite
disappointed that it was not more. I never was so deceived in anyone’s
character in my life before.”

“Among all the great variety that you have known and studied.”

“My own disappointment and loss in her is very great; but, as for poor
James, I suppose he will hardly ever recover it.”

“Your brother is certainly very much to be pitied at present; but we
must not, in our concern for his sufferings, undervalue yours. You
feel, I suppose, that in losing Isabella, you lose half yourself: you
feel a void in your heart which nothing else can occupy. Society is
becoming irksome; and as for the amusements in which you were wont to
share at Bath, the very idea of them without her is abhorrent. You
would not, for instance, now go to a ball for the world. You feel that
you have no longer any friend to whom you can speak with unreserve, on
whose regard you can place dependence, or whose counsel, in any
difficulty, you could rely on. You feel all this?”

“No,” said Catherine, after a few moments’ reflection, “I do not—ought
I? To say the truth, though I am hurt and grieved, that I cannot still
love her, that I am never to hear from her, perhaps never to see her
again, I do not feel so very, very much afflicted as one would have
thought.”

“You feel, as you always do, what is most to the credit of human
nature. Such feelings ought to be investigated, that they may know
themselves.”

Catherine, by some chance or other, found her spirits so very much
relieved by this conversation that she could not regret her being led
on, though so unaccountably, to mention the circumstance which had
produced it.