The circumstance of the morning had led Catherine's feelings through the varieties of suspense,security,and disappointment;but they were now safely lodged in perfect bliss;and with spirits elated to rapture,with Henry at her heart,and Northanger Abbey on her lips,she hurried home to write her letter.Mr and Mrs Morland,relying on the discretion of the friends to whom they had already entrusted their daughter,felt no doubt of the propriety of an acquaintance which had been formed under their eye,and sent therefore by return of post their ready consent to her visit in Gloucestershire.This indulgence,though not more than Catherine had hoped for,completed her conviction of being favoured beyond every other human creature,in friends and fortune,circumstance and chance.Everything seemed to co operate for her advantage.By the kindness of her first friends the Allens,she had been introduced into scenes,where pleasures of every kind had met her.Her feelings,her preferences had each known the happiness of a return.Wherever she felt attachment,she had been able to create it.The affection of Isabella was to be secured to her in a sister.The Tilneys,they,by whom above all,she desired to be favourably thought of,outstripped even her wishes in the flattering measures by which their intimacy was to be continued.She was to be their chosen visitor,she was to be for weeks under the same roof with the person whose society she mostly prized and,in addition to all the rest,this roof was to be the roof of an abbey! Her passion for ancient edifices was next in degree to her passion for Henry Tilney and castles and abbeys made usually the charm of those reveries which his image did not fill.To see and explore either the ramparts and keep of the one,or the cloisters of the other,had been for many weeks a darling wish,though to be more than the visitor of an hour,had seemed too nearly impossible for desire.And yet,this was to happen.With all the chances against her of house,hall,place,park,court,and cottage,Northanger turned up an abbey,and she was to be its inhabitant.Its long,damp passages,its narrow cells and ruined chapel,were to be within her daily reach,and she could not entirely subdue the hope of some traditional legends,some awful memorials of an injured and ill fated nun.
It was wonderful that her friends should seem so little elated by the possession of such a home;that the consciousness of it should be so meekly born.The power of early habit only could account for it.A distinction to which they had been born gave no pride.Their superiority of abode was no more to them than their superiority of person.
Many were the inquiries she was eager to make of Miss Tilney;but so active were her thoughts,that when these inquiries were answered,she was hardly more assured than before,of Northanger Abbey having been a richly endowed convent at the time of the Reformation,of its having fallen into the hands of an ancestor of the Tilneys on its dissolution,of a large portion of the ancient building still making a part of the present dwelling although the rest was decayed,or of its standing low in a valley,sheltered from the north and east by rising woods of oak.
Chapter 18
With a mind thus full of happiness,Catherine was hardly aware that two or three days had passed away,without her seeing Isabella for more than a few minutes together.She began first to be sensible of this,and to sigh for her conversation,as she walked along the Pump room one morning,by Mrs Allen's side,without anything to say or to hear;and scarcely had she felt a five minutes'longing of friendship,before the object of it appeared,and inviting her to a secret conference,led the way to a seat.‘This is my favourite place,’said she,as they sat down on a bench between the doors,which commanded a tolerable view of everybody entering at either,‘it is so out of the way.’
Catherine,observing that Isabella's eyes were continually bent towards one door or the other,as in eager expectation,and remembering how often she had been falsely accused of being arch,thought the present a fine opportunity for being really so;and therefore gaily said,‘Do not be uneasy,Isabella.James will soon be here.’
‘Psha!my dear creature,’she replied,‘do not think me such a simpleton as to be always wanting to confine him to my elbow.It would be hideous to be always together;we should be the jest of the place.And so you are going to Northanger! I am amazingly glad of it.It is one of the finest old places in England,I understand.I shall depend upon a most particular deion of it.’
‘You shall certainly have the best in my power to give.But who are you looking for?Are your sisters coming?’
‘I am not looking for anybody.One's eyes must be somewhere,and you know what a foolish trick I have of fixing mine,when my thoughts are an hundred miles off.I am amazingly absent;I believe I am the most absent creature in the world.Tilney says it is always the case with minds of a certain stamp.’
‘But I thought,Isabella,you had something in particular to tell me?’
‘Oh!yes,and so I have.But here is a proof of what I was saying.My poor head!I had quite forgot it.Well,the thing is this，I have just had a letter from John; you can guess the contents.’
‘No,indeed,I cannot.’
‘My sweet love,do not be so abominably affected.What can he write about,but yourself?You know he is over head and ears in love with you.’
‘With me,dear Isabella!’