book, and told its name; though the chances must be against her being occupied by any part of that voluminous publication, of which either the matter or manner would not disgust a young person of taste:  the substance of its papers so often consisting in the statement of improbable circumstances, unnatural characters, and topics of conversation which no longer concern anyone living; and their language, too, frequently so coarse as to give no very favourable idea of the age that could endure it.

CHAPTER 6

The following conversation, which took place between the two friends in the pump-room one morning, after an acquaintance of eight or nine days, is given as a specimen of their very warm attachment, and of the delicacy, discretion, originality of thought, and literary taste which marked the reasonableness of that attachment.

They met by appointment; and as Isabella had arrived nearly five minutes before her friend, her first address naturally was, “My dearest creature, what can have made you so late?  I have been waiting for you at least this age!”

“Have you, indeed!  I am very sorry for it; but really I thought I was in very good time.  It is but just one.  I hope you have not been here long?”

“Oh!  These ten ages at least.  I am sure I have been here this half hour.  But now, let us go and sit down at the other end of the room, and enjoy ourselves.  I have an hundred things to say to you.  In the first place, I was so afraid it would rain this morning, just as I wanted to set off; it looked very showery, and that would have thrown me into agonies!  Do you know, I saw the prettiest hat you can imagine, in a shop window in Milsom Street just now —­ very like yours, only with coquelicot ribbons instead of green; I quite longed for it.  But, my dearest Catherine, what have you been doing with yourself all this morning?  Have you gone on with Udolpho?”

“Yes, I have been reading it ever since I woke; and I am got to the black veil.”

“Are you, indeed?  How delightful!  Oh!  I would not tell you what is behind the black veil for the world!  Are not you wild to know?”

“Oh!  Yes, quite; what can it be?  But do not tell me —­ I would not be told upon any account.  I know it must be a skeleton, I am sure it is Laurentina’s skeleton.  Oh!  I am delighted with the book!  I should like to spend my whole life in reading it.  I assure you, if it had not been to meet you, I would not have come away from it for all the world.”

“Dear creature!  How much I am obliged to you; and when you have finished Udolpho, we will read the Italian together; and I have made out a list of ten or twelve more of the same kind for you.”

“Have you, indeed!  How glad I am!  What are they all?”

“I will read you their names directly; here they are, in my pocketbook.  Castle of Wolfenbach, Clermont, Mysterious Warnings, Necromancer of the Black Forest, Midnight Bell, Orphan of the Rhine, and Horrid Mysteries.  Those will last us some time.”