Isabella Thorpe

“ Isabella particularly."
"I am very glad to hear you say so; she is just the kind of young woman I could wish to see you attached to; she has so much good sense, and is so thoroughly unaffected and amiable; I always wanted you to know her; and she seems very fond of you. She said the highest things in your praise that could possibly be; and the praise of such a girl as Miss Thorpe even you, Catherine," taking her hand with affection, "may be proud of." ”

“ James Morland comes to Bath, and—having, of course, light eyes and a sallow complexion—is very soon Isabella's declared and accepted lover. John Thorpe comes too, and having fallen in love—or supposing he has—with Catherine, she receives her first offer from him, though being quite unconscious of his admiration for her, which is not very intelligibly expressed, she does not know, until later in the story, that he has offered himself. Last, but not leasts Isabella introduces Catherine to the class of novels which are to influence her mind so powerfully. ”

“ She wished Isabella had talked more like her usual self, and not so much about money, and had not looked so well pleased at the sight of Captain Tilney. How strange that she should not perceive his admiration! Catherine longed to give her a hint of it, to put her on her guard, and prevent all the pain which her too lively behaviour might otherwise create both for him and her brother.
The compliment of John Thorpe's affection did not make amends for this thoughtlessness in his sister. She was almost as far from believing as from wishing it to be sincere ”

“ Ah! my Catherine, you have found me out. There's the sting. The long, long, endless two years and half that are to pass before your brother can hold the living."
"Yes, yes, my darling Isabella," said Mrs. Thorpe, "we perfectly see into your heart. You have no disguise. We perfectly understand the present vexation; and every body must love you the better for such a noble honest affection."
Catherine's uncomfortable feelings began to lessen. She endeavoured to believe that the delay of the marriage was the only source of Isabella's regret ”

“ But “No, no, no!” was the immediate answer; “that could not be, for Thorpe did not know that he might not go to town on Tuesday.” Catherine was sorry, but could do no more; and a short silence ensued, which was broken by Isabella, who in a voice of cold resentment said, “Very well, then there is an end of the party. If Catherine does not go, I cannot. I cannot be the only woman. I would not, upon any account in the world, do so improper a thing.”
“Catherine, you must go,” said James.
“But why cannot Mr. Thorpe drive one of his other sisters? ”

“ Catherine, relieved for herself, felt uneasy for Isabella, and after a moment’s thought, asked Mr. Allen whether it would not be both proper and kind in her to write to Miss Thorpe, and explain the indecorum of which she must be as insensible as herself; for she considered that Isabella might otherwise perhaps be going to Clifton the next day, in spite of what had passed. Mr. Allen, however, discouraged her from doing any such thing. “You had better leave her alone, my dear; she is old enough to know what she is about, and if not, has a mother to advise her. ”

“ The general, perceiving his son one night at the theatre to be paying considerable attention to Miss Morland, had accidentally inquired of Thorpe if he knew more of her than her name. Thorpe, most happy to be on speaking terms with a man of General Tilney’s importance, had been joyfully and proudly communicative; and being at that time not only in daily expectation of Morland’s engaging Isabella, but likewise pretty well resolved upon marrying Catherine himself, his vanity induced him to represent the family as yet more wealthy than his vanity and avarice had made him believe them. ”

“ To be always firm must be to be often obstinate. When properly to relax is the trial of judgment; and, without reference to my brother, I really think Miss Thorpe has by no means chosen ill in fixing on the present hour."
The friends were not able to get together for any confidential discourse till all the dancing was over; but then, as they walked about the room arm in arm, Isabella thus explained herself:—"I do not wonder at your surprize; and I am really fatigued to death. ”

“ Time drags wearily with the heavy-hearted, and all too quickly speeds with the gay. To Mr. Thorpe’s quiet home it has brought no sudden transformation. The head of the house has gone on in his matter-of-fact way, adding, year by year, to his well-filled coffers, until he has come to be acknowledged in business parlance, “one of the heaviest men of the town,” which is quite as true literally. Mrs. Thorpe, the matron, is as charming and pretty as the Mrs. Thorpe of earlier years; while March has grown from babyhood past childhood into dawning womanhood, the pet and idol of the home. ”

“ I went over there with him, but it didn't seem to be my kind of a show, and so I left him there, and I'm to look in again for him at 5:30. I'm going down to his place in the country with him tonight, to meet his boss—the nobleman I spoke of.”
“That's nice,” Thorpe commented, slowly. “I envy anybody who can get into the country these days. But how did you know I was here?” “The woman in the book-store told me—I went there the first thing. You might be sure I'd look you up. Nobody was ever a better friend than you've been to me, Thorpe. ”

“ Thorpe, and you will see the same difference every where," answered the captain. "Look at the Swiss cantons, for instance. You can tell the moment, you pass from a Protestant to a Roman Catholic canton, by the look of the farms and the people."
I had seen young Mr. Thorpe several times, though his aunt did not greatly encourage his visits. But he had taken us all to see his ship, and we had gone in company once to visit good Mrs. Davis in the country. He was moreover a constant attendant at St. Anne's, and dutifully gave Mrs. Thorpe his arm home to her own door every Sunday. ”

“ Thorpe determined not to go to the house again until either Nina or Mr. Randolph sent for him. He would not run after any woman, he told himself angrily; and once or twice he was in a humour to snap the affair in two where it was and leave the country. But, on the whole, the separation whetted his passion. That airy fabric of sentiment, imagination, and civilisation called spiritual affinity, occasionally dominated him, but not for long. ”

“ I needn't tell you that land stands for much more than money, if you happen to set your mind on a baronetcy or a peerage. Of course—I need scarcely say—I mention this marriage only as something which may or may not attract you,—it is quite open to you to prefer another,—but there is hardly anything of that sort in which I and my connections could not be of use to you.”
Even more by the tone and inflection of these words than by the phrases themselves, Thorpe divined that he was being offered the hand of the Hon. Winifred Plowden in marriage. ”

“ Frank Orde, the Squire’s nephew, had arrived the day before, and old Mr Wood, of the Grange, had walked over to the Red House, not, certainly, with the expectation of finding Mrs Featherly installed at Thorpe, nor with any satisfaction at the fact.
“Why on earth didn’t you get rid of the woman?” he growled sharply, under his breath. “She says as many disagreeable things as if she were a relation.”
“Charles manages her admirably,” said Mr Robert, laughing. “His excessive politeness is just what she cannot meet with her usual weapons. ”

“ Places like Underham offer peculiar attractions to maiden ladies, who find in them equal protection from the solitude of the country and relief from the somewhat dreary desolateness of a great town. It might have been an old friendship for Mrs Miles which first brought Miss Philippa Lee into the neighbourhood, but she firmly resisted all attempts to decoy her nearer to Thorpe. She took a small house not far from the Featherlys, and there devoted herself to the care of her orphan nephew with that pathetic self-renunciation which we see in not a few women’s lives. ”

“ Thorpe's thoughts, however, were not upon types. “Well”—he said, from the opposite chair, in his roundest, heartiest voice, when the other had with diffidence suffered himself to be served, and had deferentially lighted on one side the big cigar pressed upon him—“Well—and how's the world been using you?”
“Not very handsomely, Mr. Thorpe,” the other responded, in a hushed, constrained tone.
“Oh, chuck the Misters!” Thorpe bade him. “Aren't we old pals, man? You're plain Tavender, and I'm plain Thorpe.” ”

“ There was something in her strong and wholesome personality that caused one to trust her instinctively. And gradually, as Mrs. Thorpe was obliged to lay them down, she assumed the household cares; and cheerfully from day to day she took upon herself the burden of the work, and managed the girl in the kitchen with more tact and discretion than Mrs. Thorpe had ever been able to command.
"I do not believe that life holds any problems for Pauline," was Mrs. Thorpe's mental comment, "or that she has any doubts or fears with which to contend." ”

“ Isoult saw that Mrs Rose seemed comforted, and Thekla was well able to comfort, so she gently withdrew. But when she came down-stairs, John having now returned, she asked him and Dr Thorpe to tell her their opinions.
“My thought is,” replied Dr Thorpe, “that the fellow knoweth not his business. He must have cold blood in his veins, as a worm hath. ”

“ From Aussee he wrote to his brother:—
“It suits me better to wile away my days in this solitary state of existence, in the contemplation of Nature, than to attempt to enter into London society, where recollections call up the idea of what I was, and the want of bodily power teaches me what a shadow I am.... I am now going to Ischl, where there are warm salt baths to try if they will renovate the muscular powers of my arm and leg.... I wish to go to Trieste in October, to make the experiments I have long projected on the torpedo.” ”

“ Without any striking beauty in the landscape about Thorpe, a certain pastoral and homely charm in the thatched cottages, the fields, the blossoming orchards, and even in such unromantic details as the shallow duck-pond under Widow Andrews’s wall, made a more exacting demand upon the affections of those who lived among them than could altogether be understood by such as only looked upon them from the outside. ”

“ I don’t believe there’s a richer bit of soil in all England, and they can do no more than get a three-cornered mouthful of pasture out of it for one old cow.”
“O Anthony, why can’t you let things alone, when they don’t concern you? My father has allowed you to have your own way about the paddock, and you surely need not tease Mr Chester to death over his hedges.”
“That is so like a woman, who can never see anything beyond her own shadow. Can’t you understand that it would be for the good of Thorpe if the ground that feeds people’s mouths were better drained and if there were more of it?” ”

“ Thorpe? Estenega and Chonita go too.”
And Thorpe gratefully accepted.
As they returned, they saw the great company streaming down from the Mission, a mass of colour. Few were on foot. No Californian walked a mile, if he had a horse to ride.
Thorpe hastened to his room to make his morning toilet. When he left it, the court and corridors were crowded with the brilliantly plumaged men and women. Reinaldo, in blue silk, was strutting about among the girls, as proud and happy as a girl dressed for her first party. ”

“ Thorpe expressed himself as in agreement. As the half-quizzical conversation progressed, he found their relations adjusting themselves with increasing rapidity. He had been successively the mystic devotee before his vision, the worshipper before his goddess; now he was unconsciously assuming the attitude of the lover before his mistress. It needs always this humanizing touch to render the greatest of all passions livable. ”

“ One might study her very closely, however, and catch no hint that these facts in any degree disconcerted her.
Thorpe studied her a good deal, in a furtive way, with a curiosity born of his knowledge that the Duke had preferred her, when he might have married his widowed cousin, who was now Thorpe's own wife. How he had come to know this, he could never have told. He had breathed it in, somehow, with the gossip-laden atmosphere of that one London season of his. ”

“ The announcement, from a clerk who had noiselessly opened the door, imposed itself with decorum upon Thorpe's reverie.
“Who is the gentleman with him?” Thorpe began austerely to ask, after an instant's hesitation. But this briefest of delays had brought the callers into plain view behind the clerk, and with a slight gesture the master assented to their entrance.
This large apartment was no longer called the Board Room by anybody. By tacit processes, it had become Mr. Thorpe's room. ”

“ He emptied the magazine into the head, though he knew this was only a feeler and a feeder for a still more horrible mouth in the monstrous body that rose and fell tremendously in the dark waters beyond. But it was typical of Robert Thorpe that even in the horror and frenzy of the moment he rammed another clip of cartridges into his rifle before he stooped to again raise the prostrate figure of Ruth Allaire.
The forward deck for the moment was clear; it rose high with the weight of the writhing, twisting arms that weighed down the stern of the yacht where the crew had taken refuge. ”