markable occurrence is long deferred,
for Mrs. Radcliffe appreciates fully the value of suspense in
luring on her readers, but our attention is distracted in the
meantime by a series of new events. Treasuring the unfinished
adventure in the recesses of our memory, we follow the course of
the story. When La Motte decides impulsively to reside in a
deserted abbey, "not," as he once remarks, "in all respects
strictly Gothic," but containing a trap-door and a human skeleton
in a chest, we willingly take up our abode there and wait
patiently to see what will happen. Our interest is inclined to
flag when life at the abbey seems uneventful, but we are ere long
rewarded by a visit from a stranger, whose approach flings La
Motte into so violent a state of alarm that he vanishes with
remarkable abruptness beneath a trapdoor. It proves, however,
that the intruder is merely La Motte's son, and the timid marquis
is able to emerge. Meanwhile, La Motte's wife, suspicious of her
husband's morose habits and his secret visits to a Gothic
sepulchre, becomes jealous of Adeline, the girl they have
befriended. It later transpires that La Motte has turned
highwayman and stores his booty in this secluded spot. The visits
are so closely shrouded in obscurity, and we have so exhausted
our imagination in picturing dark possibilities, that the simple
solution falls disappointingly short of our expectations. The
next thrill is produced by the arrival of two strangers, the
wicked marquis and the noble hero, without whom the tale of
characters in a novel of terror would scarcely be complete. The
emotion La Motte betrays at the sight of the marquis is due, we
are told eventually, to the fact that Montalt was the victim of
his first robbery. Adeline, meanwhile, in a dream sees a
beckoning figure in a dark cloak, a dying man imprisoned in a
darkened chamber, a coffin and a bleeding corpse, and hears a
voice from the coffin. The disjointed episodes and bewildering
incoherence of a nightmare are suggested with admirable skill,
and effectually prepare our minds for Adeline's discoveries a few
nights later. Passing through a door, concealed by the arras of
her bedroom, into a chamber like that she had seen in her sleep,
she stumbles over a rusty dagger and finds a roll of mouldering
manuscripts. This incident is robbed of its effect for readers of
_Northanger Abbey_ by insistent reminiscences of Catherine
Morland's discovery of the washing bills. But Adel