Mr. and Mrs. Morland, relying on the
discretion of the friends to whom they had already entrusted their
daughter, felt no doubt of the propriety of an acquaintance which had
been formed under their eye, and sent therefore by return of post their
ready consent to her visit in Gloucestershire. This indulgence, though
not more than Catherine had hoped for, completed her conviction of
being favoured beyond every other human creature, in friends and
fortune, circumstance and chance. Everything seemed to cooperate for
her advantage. By the kindness of her first friends, the Allens, she
had been introduced into scenes where pleasures of every kind had met
her. Her feelings, her preferences, had each known the happiness of a
return. Wherever she felt attachment, she had been able to create it. The affection of Isabella was to be secured to her in a sister. The
Tilneys, they, by whom, above all, she desired to be favourably thought
of, outstripped even her wishes in the flattering measures by which
their intimacy was to be continued. She was to be their chosen visitor,
she was to be for weeks under the same roof with the person whose
society she mostly prized—and, in addition to all the rest, this roof
was to be the roof of an abbey! her passion for ancient edifices was
next in degree to her passion for Henry Tilney—and castles and abbeys
made usually the charm of those reveries which his image did not fill. To see and explore either the ramparts and keep of the one, or the
cloisters of the other, had been for many weeks a darling wish, though
to be more than the visitor of an hour had seemed too nearly impossible
for desire. And yet, this was to happen. With all the chances against
her of house, hall, place, park, court, and cottage, Northanger turned
up an abbey, and she was to be its inhabitant. Its long, damp passages,
its narrow cells and ruined chapel, were to be within her daily reach,
and she could not entirely subdue the hope of some traditional legends,
some awful memorials of an injured and ill-fated nun. It was wonderful that her friends should seem so little elated by the
possession of such a home, that the consciousness of it should be so
meekly borne. The power of early habit only could account for it. A
distinction to which they had been born gave no pride. Their
superiority of abode was no more to them than their superiority of
person. Many were the inquiries she was eager to make of Miss Tilney; but so
active were her thoughts, that when these inquiries were answered, she
was hardly more assured than before, of Northanger Abbey having been a
richly endowed convent at the time of the Reformation, of its having
fallen into the hands of an ancestor of the Tilneys on its dissolution,
of a large portion of the ancient building still making a part of the
present dwelling although the rest was decayed, or of its standing low
in a valley, sheltered from the north and east by rising woods of oak. CHAPTER 18


With a mind thus full of happiness, Catherine was hardly aware that two
or three days had passed away, without her seeing Isabella for more
than a few minutes together. She began first to be sensible of this,
and to sigh for her conversation, as she walked along the pump-room one
morning, by Mrs. Allen’s side, without anything to say or to hear; and
scarcely had she felt a five minutes’ longing of friendship, before the
object of it appeared, and inviting her to a secret conference, led the
way to a seat. “This is my favourite place,” said she as they sat down
on a bench between the doors, which commanded a tolerable view of
everybody entering at either; “it is so out of the way.”

Catherine, observing that Isabella’s eyes were continually bent towards
one door or the other, as in eager expectation, and remembering how
often she had been falsely accused of being arch, thought the present a
fine opportunity for being really so; and therefore gaily said, “Do not
be uneasy, Isabella, James will soon be here.”

“Psha! my dear creature,” she replied, “do not think me such a
simpleton as to be always wanting to confine him to my elbow. It would
be hideous to be always together; we should be the jest of the place. And so you are going to Northanger! i am amazingly glad of it. It is
one of the finest old places in England, I understand. I shall depend
upon a most particular description of it.”

“You shall certainly have the best in my power to give. But who are you
looking for? Are your sisters coming?”

“I am not looking for anybody. One’s eyes must be somewhere, and you
know what a foolish trick I have of fixing mine, when my thoughts are
an hundred miles off. I am amazingly absent; I believe I am the most
absent creature in the world. Tilney says it is always the case with
minds of a certain stamp.”

“But I thought, Isabella, you had something in particular to tell me?”

“Oh yes, and so I have. But here is a proof of what I was saying. My
poor head, I had quite forgot it. Well, the thing is this: I have just
had a letter from John; you can guess the contents.”

“No, indeed, I cannot.”

“My sweet love, do not be so abominably affected. What can he write
about, but yourself? You know he is over head and ears in love with
you.”

“With _me_, dear Isabella!”

“Nay, my sweetest Catherine, this is being quite absurd! modesty, and
all that, is very well in its way, but really a little common honesty
is sometimes quite as becoming. I have no idea of being so
overstrained! it is fishing for compliments. His attentions were such
as a child must have noticed. And it was but half an hour before he
left Bath that you gave him the most positive encouragement. He says so
in this letter, says that he as good as made you an offer, and that you
received his advances in the kindest way; and now he wants me to urge
his suit, and say all manner of pretty things to you. So it is in vain
to affect ignorance.”

Catherine, with all the earnestness of truth, expressed her
astonishment at such a charge, protesting her innocence of every
thought of Mr. Thorpe’s being in love with her, and the consequent
impossibility of her having ever intended to encourage him. “As to any
attentions on his side, I do declare, upon my honour, I never was
sensible of them for a moment—except just his asking me to dance the
first day of his coming. And as to making me an offer, or anything like
it, there must be some unaccountable mistake. I could not have
misunderstood a thing of that kind, you know! and, as I ever wish to be
believed, I solemnly protest that no syllable of such a nature ever
passed between us. The last half hour before he went away! it must be
all and completely a mistake—for I did not see him once that whole
morning.”

“But _that_ you certainly did, for you spent the whole morning in
Edgar’s Buildings—it was the day your father’s consent came—and I am
pretty sure that you and John were alone in the parlour some time
before you left the house.”

“Are you?