Still, Catherine’s passion for romance was not easily to be disappointed.  Hearing from Eleanor Tilney that her mother’s fatal illness had been sudden and short, and had taken place in her absence from home, Catherine’s blood ran cold with the horrid suggestions that naturally sprang from these words.  Could it be possible?  Could Henry’s father——?  And yet how many were the examples to justify even the blackest suspicions?  And when she saw him in the evening, while she worked with her friend, slowly pacing the drawing-room for an hour together in silent thoughtfulness, with downcast eye and contracted brow, she felt secure from all possibility of wronging him.  It was indeed 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?

Full, then, of the idea that the general had ill-treated his wife, ready even to believe that she might still be living and a prisoner, our heroine set out one day to explore a certain set of rooms into which the general, in showing her over the house, had not taken her.  But she was caught in the act by Henry Tilney, who revealed, with customary openness, what had been in her mind, and received only a very gentle rebuke.

Most grievously was she humbled.  Her folly, which now seemed even criminal, was all exposed to him; and he must surely despise her for ever.  But he did nothing of the kind.  His astonishing generosity and nobleness of conduct were such that the only difference he made in his behaviour to her was to pay her somewhat more attention than usual.

But the anxieties of common life began soon to succeed to the alarms of romance.  Catherine’s desire of hearing from Isabella grew every day greater.  For nine successive mornings she wondered over the repetition of disappointment; and then, on the tenth, she got a letter—­not from Isabella, but from James, announcing the breaking off of the engagement by mutual consent.  At first she was much upset by the news, and burst into tears.  But in the end she saw it in a more philosophic light, so that before long Henry was able to rally her on her former bosom friendship with Miss Thorpe without offending her.  And when a day or two later a letter arrived from Isabella containing the amazing sentences, “I am quite uneasy about your dear brother, not having heard from him since he went to Oxford, and am fearful of some misunderstanding.  Your kind offices will set all right:  he is the only man I ever did or could love, and I trust you will convince him of it——­” Catherine resolved:  “No; whatever would happen, James should never hear Isabella’s name mentioned by her again.”

Soon afterwards, a bolt fell from the blue.  General Tilney, who had paid Catherine the most embarrassing attentions, suddenly and unexpectedly returned from town, where he had gone for a day or two on business, and packed Catherine off home immediately, with hardly an apology, and at scarcely a moment’s notice.  He had met young Thorpe in town, it seemed; and John had this time under-estimated the wealth and consequence of the Morlands as much as he had over-stated them before when he talked to the general in the theatre at Bath.