Returning through the large and lofty hall, they ascended a broad staircase of shining oak, which, after many flights and many landing-places, brought them upon a long, wide gallery.  On one side it had a range of doors, and it was lighted on the other by windows which Catherine had only time to discover looked into a quadrangle, before Miss Tilney led the way into a chamber, and scarcely staying to hope she would find it comfortable, left her with an anxious entreaty that she would make as little alteration as possible in her dress.

CHAPTER 21

A moment’s glance was enough to satisfy Catherine that her apartment was very unlike the one which Henry had endeavoured to alarm her by the description of.  It was by no means unreasonably large, and contained neither tapestry nor velvet.  The walls were papered, the floor was carpeted; the windows were neither less perfect nor more dim than those of the drawing-room below; the furniture, though not of the latest fashion, was handsome and comfortable, and the air of the room altogether far from uncheerful.  Her heart instantaneously at ease on this point, she resolved to lose no time in particular examination of anything, as she greatly dreaded disobliging the general by any delay.  Her habit therefore was thrown off with all possible haste, and she was preparing to unpin the linen package, which the chaise-seat had conveyed for her immediate accommodation, when her eye suddenly fell on a large high chest, standing back in a deep recess on one side of the fireplace.  The sight of it made her start; and, forgetting everything else, she stood gazing on it in motionless wonder, while these thoughts crossed her: 

“This is strange indeed!  I did not expect such a sight as this!  An immense heavy chest!  What can it hold?  Why should it be placed here?  Pushed back too, as if meant to be out of sight!  I will look into it —­ cost me what it may, I will look into it —­ and directly too —­ by daylight.  If I stay till evening my candle may go out.”  She advanced and examined it closely:  it was of cedar, curiously inlaid with some darker wood, and raised, about a foot from the ground, on a carved stand of the same.  The lock was silver, though tarnished from age; at each end were the imperfect remains of handles also of silver, broken perhaps prematurely by some strange violence; and, on the centre of the lid, was a mysterious cipher, in the same metal.  Catherine bent over it intently, but without being able to distinguish anything with certainty.  She could not, in whatever direction she took it, believe the last letter to be a T; and yet that it should be anything else in that house was a circumstance to raise no common degree of astonishment.  If not originally theirs, by what strange events could it have fallen into the Tilney family?