i would undertake
for five pounds to drive it to York and back again, without losing a
nail.”

Catherine listened with astonishment; she knew not how to reconcile two
such very different accounts of the same thing; for she had not been
brought up to understand the propensities of a rattle, nor to know to
how many idle assertions and impudent falsehoods the excess of vanity
will lead. Her own family were plain, matter-of-fact people who seldom
aimed at wit of any kind; her father, at the utmost, being contented
with a pun, and her mother with a proverb; they were not in the habit
therefore of telling lies to increase their importance, or of asserting
at one moment what they would contradict the next. She reflected on the
affair for some time in much perplexity, and was more than once on the
point of requesting from Mr. Thorpe a clearer insight into his real
opinion on the subject; but she checked herself, because it appeared to
her that he did not excel in giving those clearer insights, in making
those things plain which he had before made ambiguous; and, joining to
this, the consideration that he would not really suffer his sister and
his friend to be exposed to a danger from which he might easily
preserve them, she concluded at last that he must know the carriage to
be in fact perfectly safe, and therefore would alarm herself no longer. By him the whole matter seemed entirely forgotten; and all the rest of
his conversation, or rather talk, began and ended with himself and his
own concerns. He told her of horses which he had bought for a trifle
and sold for incredible sums; of racing matches, in which his judgment
had infallibly foretold the winner; of shooting parties, in which he
had killed more birds (though without having one good shot) than all
his companions together; and described to her some famous day’s sport,
with the fox-hounds, in which his foresight and skill in directing the
dogs had repaired the mistakes of the most experienced huntsman, and in
which the boldness of his riding, though it had never endangered his
own life for a moment, had been constantly leading others into
difficulties, which he calmly concluded had broken the necks of many. Little as Catherine was in the habit of judging for herself, and
unfixed as were her general notions of what men ought to be, she could
not entirely repress a doubt, while she bore with the effusions of his
endless conceit, of his being altogether completely agreeable. It was a
bold surmise, for he was Isabella’s brother; and she had been assured
by James that his manners would recommend him to all her sex; but in
spite of this, the extreme weariness of his company, which crept over
her before they had been out an hour, and which continued unceasingly
to increase till they stopped in Pulteney Street again, induced her, in
some small degree, to resist such high authority, and to distrust his
powers of giving universal pleasure. When they arrived at Mrs. Allen’s door, the astonishment of Isabella
was hardly to be expressed, on finding that it was too late in the day
for them to attend her friend into the house: “Past three o’clock!” It
was inconceivable, incredible, impossible! and she would neither
believe her own watch, nor her brother’s, nor the servant’s; she would
believe no assurance of it founded on reason or reality, till Morland
produced his watch, and ascertained the fact; to have doubted a moment
longer _then_, would have been equally inconceivable, incredible, and
impossible; and she could only protest, over and over again, that no
two hours and a half had ever gone off so swiftly before, as Catherine
was called on to confirm; Catherine could not tell a falsehood even to
please Isabella; but the latter was spared the misery of her friend’s
dissenting voice, by not waiting for her answer. Her own feelings
entirely engrossed her; her wretchedness was most acute on finding
herself obliged to go directly home. It was ages since she had had a
moment’s conversation with her dearest Catherine; and, though she had
such thousands of things to say to her, it appeared as if they were
never to be together again; so, with smiles of most exquisite misery,
and the laughing eye of utter despondency, she bade her friend adieu
and went on. Catherine found Mrs. Allen just returned from all the busy idleness of
the morning, and was immediately greeted with, “Well, my dear, here you
are,” a truth which she had no greater inclination than power to
dispute; “and I hope you have had a pleasant airing?”

“Yes, ma’am, I thank you; we could not have had a nicer day.”

“So Mrs. Thorpe said; she was vastly pleased at your all going.”

“You have seen Mrs. Thorpe, then?”

“Yes, I went to the pump-room as soon as you were gone, and there I met
her, and we had a great deal of talk together. She says there was
hardly any veal to be got at market this morning, it is so uncommonly
scarce.”

“Did you see anybody else of our acquaintance?”

“Yes; we agreed to take a turn in the Crescent, and there we met Mrs.
Hughes, and Mr. and Miss Tilney walking with her.”

“Did you indeed? And did they speak to you?”

“Yes, we walked along the Crescent together for half an hour. They seem
very agreeable people. Miss Tilney was in a very pretty spotted muslin,
and I fancy, by what I can learn, that she always dresses very
handsomely. Mrs. Hughes talked to me a great deal about the family.”

“And what did she tell you of them?”

“Oh! a vast deal indeed; she hardly talked of anything else.”

“Did she tell you what part of Gloucestershire they come from?”

“Yes, she did; but I cannot recollect now. But they are very good kind
of people, and very rich. Mrs. Tilney was a Miss Drummond, and she and
Mrs. Hughes were schoolfellows; and Miss Drummond had a very large
fortune; and, when she married, her father gave her twenty thousand
pounds, and five hundred to buy wedding-clothes. Mrs. Hughes saw all
the clothes after they came from the warehouse.”

“And are Mr. and Mrs. Tilney in Bath?”

“Yes, I fancy they are, but I am not quite certain. Upon recollection,
however, I have a notion they are both dead; at least the mother is;
yes, I am sure Mrs. Tilney is dead, because Mrs. Hughes told me there
was a very beautiful set of pearls that Mr. Drummond gave his daughter
on her wedding-day and that Miss Tilney has got now, for they were put
by for her when her mother died.”

“And is Mr. Tilney, my partner, the only son?”

“I cannot be quite positive about that, my dear; I have some idea he
is; but, however, he is a very fine young man, Mrs. Hughes says, and
likely to do very well.”

Catherine inquired no further; she had heard enough to feel that Mrs.
Allen had no real intelligence to give, and that she was most
particularly unfortunate herself in having missed such a meeting with
both brother and sister.