In chapter 26 we read about Catherine's difficulties with understanding Henry's reaction to the General's comments on eating at his son's parsonage: "why he [the General] should say one thing so positively, and mean another all the while, was most unaccountable! How were people, at that rate, to be understood?"

Does this remind anyone else of Thorpe's affect on Catherine during the buggy ride in chapter 9? "Catherine listened with astonishment; she knew not how to reconcile two such very different accounts of the same thing."