Page:Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889).djvu/187

 length with the generality of what she had shuddered over in books; for the roll, seeming to consist entirely of small disjointed sheets, was altogether but of trifling size, and much less than she had supposed it to be at first. Her greedy eyes glanced rapidly over a page. She started at its import. Could it be possible, or did not her senses play her false? An inventory of linen, in coarse and modern characters, seemed all that was before her! If the evidence of sight might be trusted, she held a washing-bill in her hand. She seized another sheet, and saw the same articles with little variation; a third, a fourth, and a fifth presented nothing new: shirts, stockings, cravats, and waistcoats faced her in each. Two others, penned by the same hand, marked an expenditure, scarcely more interesting, in letters, hair-powder, shoe-string, and breeches-ball; and the larger sheet, which had enclosed the rest, seemed, by its first cramp line, 'To poultice chestnut mare,' a farrier's bill. Such was the collection of papers (left, perhaps, as she could then suppose, by the negligence of a servant, in the place whence she had taken them) which had filled her with expectation and alarm, and had robbed her of half her night's rest Why the locks should have been so difficult to open, however, was still something remarkable, for she could now manage them with perfect ease. In this there was surely something mysterious; and she indulged in the flattering suggestion for half a minute, till the possibility of the door's having been at first unlocked, and of being herself its fastener, darted into her head, and cost her another blush."

Of course her great anxiety now is to conceal her folly from Henry Tilney's satirical observation, and for some time she succeeds; but her lively imagination