As she
drives with John Thorpe she "meditates by turns on broken
promises and broken arches, phaetons and false hangings, Tilneys
and trapdoors." This prepares us for the delightful scene in
which Tilney, on the way to the abbey, foretells what Catherine
may expect on her arrival. The hall dimly lighted by the expiring
embers of a wood fire, the deserted bedchamber "never used since
some cousin or kin had died in it about twenty years before," the
single lamp, the tapestry, the funereal bed, the broken lute, the
ponderous chest, the secret door, the vaulted room, the rusty
dagger, the cabinet of ebony and gold with its roll of
manuscripts, prove his intimacy with _The Romance of the Forest_,
as well as with _The Mysteries of Udolpho_. The black chest and
the cabinet are there in startling fulfilment of his prophecies,
and when, just as with beating heart Catherine is about to
decipher the roll of paper she has discovered in the cabinet
drawer, she accidentally extinguishes her candle:
"A lamp could not have expired with more awful
effect... Darkness impenetrable and immovable filled
the room. A violent gust of wind, rising with sudden
fury, added fresh horror to the moment... Human nature
could support no more ... groping her way to the bed
she jumped hastily in, and sought some suspension of
agony by creeping far beneath the clothes.
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