showed better sense and better breeding. She
seemed capable of being young and attractive at a ball, without wanting
to fix the attention of every man near her.

_III.--Catherine Morland Among Her Friends_

Unfixed as Catherine's general notions were of a what a man ought to be,
she could not entirely repress a doubt of Mr. John Thorpe's being
altogether completely agreeable. A tattler and a swaggerer, having
elicited, as he thought, from Catherine that she was the destined
heiress of Mr. Allen, he twice endeavoured to detach her, by a glaring
lie, from keeping engagements with the Tilneys; and when he did succeed
in persuading her to go with him in his gig, she found that the whole of
his talk ended with himself and his own concerns. He told her of horses
which he had bought for a trifle and sold for incredible sums; of racing
matches in which his judgment had infallibly foretold the winner; of
shooting-parties in which he had killed more birds (though without
having one good shot) than all his companions together; and described to
her some famous days spent with the foxhounds, in which his foresight
and skill in directing the dogs had repaired the mistakes of the most
experienced huntsman, and in which the boldness of his riding, though it
had never endangered his own life for a single moment, had been
constantly leading others into difficulties which, he calmly concluded,
had broken the necks of more than one person.

All this rather wearied Catherine; and not even his relating to her that
Mr. Tilney's father, General Tilney--whom he was talking to one night at
the theatre--had declared her the finest girl in Bath could reconcile
her to the idea that Mr. John Thorpe had the faculty of giving universal
pleasure. It was a visit which she paid to Miss Tilney to apologise for
not keeping an engagement which Mr. John had caused her to break that
first introduced her to the general. A handsome, stately, well-bred man,
with a temper that made him a martinet to his own children, he received
her with a politeness, and even a deference, that delighted and
surprised her. But whereas Catherine's simplicity of character made her
growing attachment to Mr. Tilney obvious to that gentleman and to his
sister, it was not so clear that he reciprocated her feelings. Generally
he amused himself by talking down to her or making fun of her in a
good-natured way. One day they were speaking of Mrs. Radcliffe's works,
and more particula