Part 19: His Honest Heart

"I say Morland, did you hear what Thorpe has been saying about your sister?"

James dismissed it as rumor the first time someone approached him, but could not forebear longer when he heard Catherine's name bandied by those he knew to have attended Thorpe's latest party. He therefore gathered his courage and demanded an explanation from his old friend.

"D—— me, this is a good trick, as if it were not your poverty and impatience that has made Belle utterly miserable!"

The ease of his manner might have persuaded, as so often before, but James no longer believed the words.

Title from Chapter 25 of Northanger Abbey: "Poor Thorpe is in town: I dread the sight of him; his honest heart would feel so much."