a light conversation with the gentleman who offered it, which was the only time that anybody spoke to them during the evening, till they were discovered and joined by Mr. Allen when the dance was over. “‘Well, Miss Morland,’ said he directly, ‘I hope you have had an agreeable ball.’ “‘Very agreeable indeed,’ she replied, vainly endeavouring to hide a great yawn.” But poor Catherine was much more fortunate in her second essay, being introduced to Henry Tilney, the hero, who captivated her girlish admiration, and who at last, struck by her _naïvété_ and earnest affection for himself, fell in love with her and made her his wife. In _Northanger Abbey_, Jane places the Thorpes in Edgar Buildings, which she always spells “Edgar’s,” the Tilneys in Milsom Street, and Catherine Morland with the Allens in Pulteney Street. Her topography is always very exact and unimpeachable. Milsom Street also plays a large part in _Persuasion_. It is here that Anne comes across Admiral Croft looking into a print shop window, from whence he accompanies her back to Camden Place where her father and sister are, and in the course of the walk Anne learns, to her infinite relief, that Louisa Musgrove is engaged to Captain Benwick, so that the terrible thought that she might hear any day of her engagement to Captain Wentworth is dispelled for ever. In Milsom Street also, while sheltering in a shop from the rain, she first sees Captain Wentworth after his arrival in Bath, and on his coming accidentally into the same shop with some friends, both he and she are unable to hide their signs of perturbation. But it is at a concert in the Upper Rooms that Anne goes through far worse disquietude, while, with the tormenting uncertainty of an undeclared love, she sits wondering whether he will come to speak to her or not. It is at the White Hart Inn, which overlooked the entrance to the Pump Room Arcade, that the real crisis of the book takes place. Here Anne, on coming to spend the day with her sister Mary, Mrs. Charles Musgrove, who is staying there with her husband, finds Captain Harville and Captain Wentworth. It is her conversation with the former that reveals to the latter her own unchanged feelings, and gives him the courage to write her a letter declaring once more his own love, after the lapse of many years. Anne is thereby rewarded for her gentle loyalty, and when in going up Union Street with her brother-in-law she is overtaken by Captain Wentworth, and handed over to his charge, mutual explanations are made and mutual happiness reached. Certainly to the lovers of Jane Austen’s books these characters people the streets quite as vividly as any flesh-and-blood persons who have ever lived in them. CHAPTER XIII DRESS AND FASHIONS