If she wasn't already dead, I'd kill her

Egad, I finally finished the book. The mystery of the black veil got revealed in the last 10 pages, and it was a complete cop-out. I blame Jane Austen. I forgot that she was writing a parody, and I now suspect she put in the bit about the black veil because she agrees with me that it's presence in the novel was stupid and pointless. If she was writing today, the characters would have been discussing the finer points of The DaVinci Code.

I suspect that the author didn't plan out her story and was writing later chapters after already having published early pieces, and backed herself into a corner. Even the death of the major villain happened behind the scenes as she struggled to tie up all the loose ends and get the heroine married off. How else to explain that the Italian Countess Laurentina had murdered Emily's Aunt, and then secluded herself in the French convent that Emily just happened to be staying at after her father's death.

And if you must know, Emily thought it was a corpse behind the veil, but it was actually an old waxwork statue that a former resident of the castle had put up as a penitence for his sinful ways. The End.