“Indeed.” Henry reached for her hand and kissed it. “Emily and Valancourt await us, my sweet. Shall we retire?”

“I am ready.” Catherine neatly folded her sewing.

“I beg your pardon, MacGuffin,” Henry addressed the Newfoundland curled up at the foot of his chair. “It is time for bed, lad. I cannot rise while you are sleeping on my feet.”

MacGuffin raised his shaggy head and gazed up at his master adoringly, his tail thumping the floor. A string of saliva glistened at the corner of the dog’s mouth, trailing down to the old blanket placed on the floor expressly to absorb the excess. Henry gently lifted his foot in an encouraging nudge, and the dog uttered a weary moan and heaved his massive bulk to a standing position.

“Shall you let the dogs out?” Catherine asked her husband. The house terriers, lying in a tangled heap by the fire, looked round at her utterance of that favored word, “out.”

“Matthew will attend to that.”



As they passed out of the drawing room, followed by the clicking of canine claws on the wooden floor, a figure loomed from the shadows of the passage. Catherine started and gave a strangled cry.

“Beg pardon, Mrs. Tilney,” said Matthew. Matthew was the rector’s groom, clerk, and factotum; an accomplished huntsman, he glided about the parsonage as silently as he moved through the woods, frequently (and quite inadvertently) startling his mistress. However, Catherine liked Matthew, and it was not in her nature to bear a grudge, so she smiled her forgiveness.

Matthew snapped his fingers at the dogs, and they followed him down the passage toward the rear of the house as the Tilneys climbed the stairs to their bedchamber.

***

Henry had a genius for piling the pillows so that he could sit up in bed and read comfortably, even with one arm round Catherine’s waist and her head resting upon his shoulder. The fire burned brightly, and the Tilneys curled up warmly together under the quilts as Henry read aloud from Mrs. Radcliffe’s novel, The Mysteries of Udolpho.

“Valancourt,” Henry read, “between these emotions of love and pity, lost the power, and almost the wish, of repressing his agitation; and, in the intervals of convulsive sobs, he, at one moment, kissed away her tears — ”

Henry stopped reading and scattered several quick kisses across Catherine’s face. She giggled and prodded him in the chest. “There are no tears here, sir. Pray continue.”

“I would much rather kiss you.”

“Read!”

“I hear and obey, madam.” Henry returned to Udolpho. “Now, where was I? Oh, yes — kissed away her tears, then told her cruelly, that possibly she might never again weep for him, and then tried to speak more calmly, but only exclaimed, ‘O Emily — my heart will break! — I cannot — cannot leave you! Now — I gaze upon that countenance, now I hold you in my arms! A little while, and all this will appear a dream. I shall look, and cannot see you; shall try to recollect your features — and the impression will be fled from my imagination; — to hear the tones of your voice, and even memory will be silent! — I cannot, cannot leave you!’”

The first time Catherine read Udolpho, she had wept over this passage; but when Henry read Valancourt’s dialogue, he used such a simpering, affected voice that she found herself laughing at the poor Chevalier’s distress.

“‘Why should we confide the happiness of our whole lives to the will of people, who have no right to interrupt, and, except in giving you to me, have no power to promote it? O Emily! Venture to trust your own heart, venture to be mine for ever!’ His voice trembled, and he was silent; Emily continued to weep, and was silent also, when Valancourt proceeded to propose an immediate marriage, and that, at an early hour on the following morning, she should quit Madame Montoni’s house, and be conducted by him to the church of the Augustines, where a friar should await to unite them.”

Henry stopped reading and pondered for a moment. “The banns were not published? No license obtained? A curious business; I dare say that the brave Valancourt might have found the Augustine friar less receptive to his scheme than he anticipated.”

“It is only a story, Henry,” said Catherine in the patient tone used to educate the slow-witted.

“Forgive me, my sweet. It was a matter of professional interest. To continue: The silence, with which she listened to a proposal, dictated by love and despair, and enforced at a moment, when it seemed scarcely possible for her to oppose it; — when her heart was softened by the sorrows of a separation, that might be eternal, and her reason obscured by the illusions of love and terror, encouraged him to hope, that it would not be rejected. ‘Speak, my Emily!’ said Valancourt eagerly, ‘let me hear your voice, let me hear you confirm my fate.’ She spoke not; her cheek was cold, and her senses seemed to fail her, but she did not faint. To Valancourt’s terrified imagination she appeared to be dying; he called upon her name, rose to go to the chateau for assistance, and then, recollecting her situation, feared to go, or to leave her for a moment.”

Henry paused and glanced down at his wife’s rapt face. “I am glad that you are not of a swooning disposition, Cat. It must be terribly uncomfortable to have a girl forever falling insensible at inconvenient times, when she is most in need of all her faculties. It is well that you did not swoon when I offered you marriage. It might have put me off my mission.”

Catherine sighed in delight. “I assure you, I felt no inclination to swoon. That was the happiest moment of my life. I should not have liked to miss it because I was insensible.”

Henry smiled and gently touched her chin. “Then I am glad that you did not miss it.”

“It all seems so long ago, and yet we met for the first time just one year ago tonight! Henry, we should go back to Bath someday, present ourselves to Mr. King, and tell him what a successful introduction he made that night.”

“You would like to return to Bath?”

“Oh, yes! I think it would be very pleasant to return to Bath as a married woman. I should not have to worry about sitting out at the balls for lack of a partner.”

“Very well. I will write to my curate and enquire whether his schedule will allow me a fortnight in Bath, which we naturally shall extend to six weeks.”

Catherine’s delight with the scheme could not be expressed in words; fortunately, she needed no words to express that delight as admirably as her husband could desire.

Chapter Two

An Unexpected Meeting

The morning post contained a letter of great import; Henry paused only to issue a particular order to Matthew, and then went to share the news with Catherine.

He found her in the parsonage drawing-room, a very different apartment from that which she had seen on her first visit to Woodston. Fitted up with wallpaper and draperies in various shades of green and elegant new furniture, the room now indeed deserved the encomium of “the prettiest room in the world,” bestowed upon it by its then-future mistress.