the tell-tale compression of the pages before them...

[Trills]

"The anxiety, which ... must be the portion of Henry and Catherine ... can hardly extend, I fear, to the bosom of my readers, who will see in the tell-tale compression of the pages before them, that we are all hastening together to perfect felicity."

Jane Austen telling us that even though the characters are feeling a bit nervous the readers won't be because they can see that the book is nearly over so the happy ending must be coming on pretty soon.

Kindles etc have a similar thing with the % counter.

Well, the percentage does work unless you are reading on a kindle because of eyesight problems and have to get someone else to tell you what percentage you are on. If you don't do that then the end might come as a total surprise, as it did to me this morning .

Some books also have massive appendices or "here's a chapter of the next book by this author" at the end, those ones surprise me too!

It's rubbish if you're reading a volume of short stories or collected works though, you have no idea how far you are through your story/novel. At least with a paper copy you can look at the page numbers in the contents, or flick forwards to see where your current story ends.

Agree about the chapter-at-the-end, though that really annoys me rather than surprises me!