John Thorpe kept of course with Catherine, and after a few minutes’ silence renewed the conversation about his gig:—­“You will find, however, Miss Morland, it would be reckoned a cheap thing by some people, for I might have sold it for ten guineas more the next day; Jackson of Oriel bid me sixty at once; Morland was with me at the time.”

“Yes,” said Morland, who overheard this; “bet you forgot that your horse was included.”

“My horse! oh, d——­ it!  I would not sell my horse for a hundred.  Are you fond of an open carriage, Miss Morland?”

“Yes, very:  I have hardly ever an opportunity of being in one; but I am particularly fond of it.”

“I am glad of it:  I will drive you out in mine every day.”

“Thank you,” said Catherine, in some distress, from a doubt of the propriety of accepting such an offer.

“I will drive you up Lansdown Hill to-morrow.”

“Thank you; but will not your horse want rest?”

“Rest! he has only come three-and-twenty miles to-day; all nonsense:  nothing ruins horses so much as rest; nothing knocks them up so soon.  No, no:  I shall exercise mine at the average of four hours every day while I am here.”

“Shall you, indeed!” said Catherine, very seriously:  “that will be forty miles a day.”

“Forty! ay, fifty, for what I care.  Well, I will drive you up Lansdown to-morrow; mind, I am engaged.”

“How delightful that will be!” cried Isabella, turning round; “my dearest Catherine, I quite envy you; but I am afraid, brother, you will not have room for a third.”

“A third, indeed! no, no; I did not come to Bath to drive my sisters about:  that would be a good joke, faith!  Morland must take care of you.”

This brought on a dialogue of civilities between the other two; but Catherine heard neither the particulars nor the result.  Her companion’s discourse now sunk from its hitherto animated pitch to nothing more than a short, decisive sentence of praise or condemnation on the face of every women they met; and Catherine, after listening and agreeing as long as she could, with all the civility and deference of the youthful female mind, fearful of hazarding an opinion of its own in opposition to that of a self-assured man, especially where the beauty of her own sex is concerned, ventured at length to vary the subject by a question which had been long uppermost in her thoughts.  It was, “Have you ever read ‘Udolpho,’ Mr. Thorpe?”

“‘Udolpho’!  O Lord! not I:  I never read novels; I have something else to do.”

Catherine, humbled and ashamed, was going to apologize for her question; but he prevented her by saying, “Novels are all so full of nonsense and stuff! there has not been a tolerable decent one come out since ’Tom Jones,’ except the ‘Monk’; I read that t’other day:  but as for all the others, they are the stupidest things in creation.”

“I think you must like ‘Udolpho,’ if you were to read it:  it is so very interesting.”