ferent person
from the one he had equipped seven years ago, but a young man of an
open, pleasant countenance, and frank, unstudied, but feeling and
respectful manners, and such as confirmed him his friend.

It was long before Fanny could recover from the agitating happiness of
such an hour as was formed by the last thirty minutes of expectation,
and the first of fruition; it was some time even before her happiness
could be said to make her happy, before the disappointment inseparable
from the alteration of person had vanished, and she could see in him the
same William as before, and talk to him, as her heart had been yearning
to do through many a past year. That time, however, did gradually come,
forwarded by an affection on his side as warm as her own, and much less
encumbered by refinement or self-distrust. She was the first object
of his love, but it was a love which his stronger spirits, and bolder
temper, made it as natural for him to express as to feel. On the
morrow they were walking about together with true enjoyment, and every
succeeding morrow renewed a _tete-a-tete_ which Sir Thomas could not but
observe with complacency, even before Edmund had pointed it out to him.

Excepting the moments of peculiar delight, which any marked or
unlooked-for instance of Edmund's consideration of her in the last few
months had excited, Fanny had never known so much felicity in her life,
as in this unchecked, equal, fearless intercourse with the brother and
friend who was opening all his heart to her, telling her all his hopes
and fears, plans, and solicitudes respecting that long thought of,
dearly earned, and justly valued blessing of promotion; who could give
her direct and minute information of the father and mother, brothers and
sisters, of whom she very seldom heard; who was interested in all the
comforts and all the little hardships of her home at Mansfield; ready to
think of every member of that home as she directed, or differing only
by a less scrupulous opinion, and more noisy abuse of their aunt Norris,
and with whom (perhaps the dearest indulgence of the whole) all the evil
and good of their earliest years could be gone over again, and every
former united pain and pleasure retraced with the fondest recollection.
An advantage this, a strengthener of love, in which even the conjugal
tie is beneath the fraternal. Children of the same family, the same
blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means