t had been, had more thoroughly opened her
eyes to the extravagance of her late fancies than all their several
disappointments had done. Most grievously was she humbled. Most bitterly
did she cry. It was not only with herself that she was sunk--but with
Henry. Her folly, which now seemed even criminal, was all exposed to
him, and he must despise her forever. The liberty which her imagination
had dared to take with the character of his father--could he ever
forgive it? The absurdity of her curiosity and her fears--could they
ever be forgotten? She hated herself more than she could express. He
had--she thought he had, once or twice before this fatal morning, shown
something like affection for her. But now--in short, she made herself as
miserable as possible for about half an hour, went down when the
clock struck five, with a broken heart, and could scarcely give an
intelligible answer to Eleanor's inquiry if she was well. The formidable
Henry soon followed her into the room, and the only difference in his
behaviour to her was that he paid her rather more attention than usual.
Catherine had never wanted comfort more, and he looked as if he was
aware of it.

The evening wore away with no abatement of this soothing politeness; and
her spirits were gradually raised to a modest tranquillity. She did not
learn either to forget or defend the past; but she learned to hope that
it would never transpire farther, and that it might not cost her Henry's
entire regard. Her thoughts being still chiefly fixed on what she had
with such causeless terror felt and done, nothing could shortly be
clearer than that it had been all a voluntary, self-created delusion,
each trifling circumstance receiving importance from an imagination
resolved on alarm, and everything forced to bend to one purpose by
a mind which, before she entered the abbey, had been craving to be
frightened. She remembered with what feelings she had prepared for a
knowledge of Northanger. She saw that the infatuation had been created,
the mischief settled, long before her quitting Bath, and it seemed as if
the whole might be traced to the influence of that sort of reading which
she had there indulged.

Charming as were all Mrs. Radcliffe's works, and charming even as were
the works of all her imitators, it was not in them perhaps that human
nature, at least in the Midland counties of England, was to be looked
for. Of the Alps and Pyrenees, with their pine forests and their vi