"'she is formally conducted by Dorothy the ancient housekeeper up a different staircase, and along many gloomy passages, into an apartment never used since some cousin or kin died in it about twenty years before...' (Henry)
...'Oh! Mr. Tilney, how frightful!- This is just like a book!-… Well, what then?' (Catherine)" (pg 150)
It is interesting to me to see how Henry Tilney eggs Catherine on in her wild imaginations about the Abbey. In fact, I feel that he is somewhat to blame for her assumptions about the Captain. He plants these ideas in her head as a means of teasing her fascination with Northanger Abbey, but doesn't think to consider the consequences of said actions. He knows that she is very naïve and spends most of her time reading gothic novels, so obviously he was trying to scare her. The couple does have an 8 year age gap, and I think that this interaction best demonstrates the dangers of such a large difference in age. Henry is much more mature than Catherine, and uses this to his advantage to spook her and tease her. It is quite revealing about his character.
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