“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.