What could they have to say of her?
She feared General Tilney did not like her appearance: she found it was implied in his preventing her admittance to his daughter, rather than postpone his own walk a few minutes.

"How came Mr.Thorpe to know your father ?" was her anxious inquiry, as she pointed them out to her companion.

He knew nothing about it; but his father, like every military man, had a very large acquaintance.
When the entertainment was over, Thorpe came to assist them in getting out.

Catherine was the immediate object of his gallantry; and, while they waited in the lobby for a chair, he prevented the inquiry which had travelled from her heart almost to the tip of her tongue, by asking, in a consequential manner, whether she had seen him talking with General Tilney: "He is a fine old fellow, upon my soul! Stout, active--looks as young as his son.

I have a great regard for him, I assure you: a gentleman-like, good sort of fellow as ever lived." "But how came you to know him ?" "Know him! There are few people much about town that I do not know.