I was wondering, as I read the description of how Thorpe talked to the General about the Morlands, whether the General would have been as angry if Thorpe hadn't exaggerated the Morland's condition in the negative as much as he had in the positive. He didn't just say, "She's not an heiress", he made them downright indigent, and scheming to climb their way up the social ladder by devious means.

I tried to think of it from General Tilney's perspective - if he thought Catherine (and her entire family) was being intentionally deceitful, maybe his reaction wasn't too blown out of proportion. What if he'd just found out that she was from a respectable family of reasonable means? Though not of the worth that Thorpe had initially led him to believe, maybe he wouldn't have been so outraged?