Page:Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889).djvu/183

 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. One moment, surely, might be spared; and so desperate should be the exertion of her strength, that, unless secured by supernatural means, the lid in one moment should be thrown back. With this spirit she sprang forward, and her confidence did not deceive her. Her resolute effort threw back the lid, and gave to her astonished eyes the view of a white cotton counterpane, properly folded, reposing at one end of the chest in undisputed possession."

Catherine has sense enough to be abashed at the perception of her own folly, but not quite enough to get immediately over the effects of being really in an abbey like one of Mrs. Radcliffe's heroines; and that night her courage is again put to the test. It is a very stormy night, quite "like what one reads about," but Catherine, determined now to be brave, undresses very leisurely, and even resolves not to make up her fire. "That would seem cowardly, as if she wished