ry 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?

Her fearful curiosity was every moment growing greater; and seizing,
with trembling hands, the hasp of the lock, she resolved at all hazards
to satisfy herself at least as to its contents. With difficulty, for
something seemed to resist her efforts, she raised the lid a few inches;
but at that moment a sudden knocking at the door of the room made her,
starting, quit her hold, and the lid closed with alarming violence. This
ill-time