In the course of this morning’s reflections, she came to a resolution of making her next attempt on the forbidden door alone.  It would be much better in every respect that Eleanor should know nothing of the matter.  To involve her in the danger of a second detection, to court her into an apartment which must wring her heart, could not be the office of a friend.  The general’s utmost anger could not be to herself what it might be to a daughter; and, besides, she thought the examination itself would be more satisfactory if made without any companion.  It would be impossible to explain to Eleanor the suspicions, from which the other had, in all likelihood, been hitherto happily exempt; nor could she therefore, in her presence, search for those proofs of the general’s cruelty, which however they might yet have escaped discovery, she felt confident of somewhere drawing forth, in the shape of some fragmented journal, continued to the last gasp.  Of the way to the apartment she was now perfectly mistress; and as she wished to get it over before Henry’s return, who was expected on the morrow, there was no time to be lost.  The day was bright, her courage high; at four o’clock, the sun was now two hours above the horizon, and it would be only her retiring to dress half an hour earlier than usual.

It was done; and Catherine found herself alone in the gallery before the clocks had ceased to strike.  It was no time for thought; she hurried on, slipped with the least possible noise through the folding doors, and without stopping to look or breathe, rushed forward to the one in question.  The lock yielded to her hand, and, luckily, with no sullen sound that could alarm a human being.  On tiptoe she entered; the room was before her; but it was some minutes before she could advance another step.  She beheld what fixed her to the spot and agitated every feature.  She saw a large, well-proportioned apartment, an handsome dimity bed, arranged as unoccupied with an housemaid’s care, a bright Bath stove, mahogany wardrobes, and neatly painted chairs, on which the warm beams of a western sun gaily poured through two sash windows!  Catherine had expected to have her feelings worked, and worked they were.  Astonishment and doubt first seized them; and a shortly succeeding ray of common sense added some bitter emotions of shame.  She could not be mistaken as to the room; but how grossly mistaken in everything else! —­ in Miss Tilney’s meaning, in her own calculation!  This apartment, to which she had given a date so ancient, a position so awful, proved to be one end of what the general’s father had built.  There were two other doors in the chamber, leading probably into dressing-closets; but she had no inclination to open either.  Would the veil in which Mrs. Tilney had last walked, or the volume in which she had last read, remain to tell what nothing else was allowed to whisper?  No:  whatever might have been the general’s crimes, he had certainly too much