mething more to you--a very pretty piece--and your cousin Edmund's
prime favourite. You must stay and hear your cousin's favourite."

Fanny felt that she must; and though she had not waited for that
sentence to be thinking of Edmund, such a memento made her particularly
awake to his idea, and she fancied him sitting in that room again
and again, perhaps in the very spot where she sat now, listening with
constant delight to the favourite air, played, as it appeared to her,
with superior tone and expression; and though pleased with it herself,
and glad to like whatever was liked by him, she was more sincerely
impatient to go away at the conclusion of it than she had been before;
and on this being evident, she was so kindly asked to call again, to
take them in her walk whenever she could, to come and hear more of the
harp, that she felt it necessary to be done, if no objection arose at
home.

Such was the origin of the sort of intimacy which took place between
them within the first fortnight after the Miss Bertrams' going away--an
intimacy resulting principally from Miss Crawford's desire of something
new, and which had little reality in Fanny's feelings. Fanny went to her
every two or three days: it seemed a kind of fascination: she could not
be easy without going, and yet it was without loving her, without ever
thinking like her, without any sense of obligation for being sought
after now when nobody else was to be had; and deriving no higher
pleasure from her conversation than occasional amusement, and _that_
often at the expense of her judgment, when it was raised by pleasantry
on people or subjects which she wished to be respected. She went,
however, and they sauntered about together many an half-hour in Mrs.
Grant's shrubbery, the weather being unusually mild for the time of
year, and venturing sometimes even to sit down on one of the benches now
comparatively unsheltered, remaining there perhaps till, in the midst
of some tender ejaculation of Fanny's on the sweets of so protracted
an autumn, they were forced, by the sudden swell of a cold gust shaking
down the last few yellow leaves about them, to jump up and walk for
warmth.

"This is pretty, very pretty," said Fanny, looking around her as
they were thus sitting together one day; "every time I come into this
shrubbery I am more struck with its growth and beauty. Three years ago,
this was nothing but a rough hedgerow along the upper side of the field,
never thoug