the manner of breaking it to all the others,
when Sir Thomas's assurances of their both being alive and well made it
necessary to lay by her agitation and affectionate preparatory speeches
for a while.

The winter came and passed without their being called for; the accounts
continued perfectly good; and Mrs. Norris, in promoting gaieties for her
nieces, assisting their toilets, displaying their accomplishments,
and looking about for their future husbands, had so much to do as, in
addition to all her own household cares, some interference in those of
her sister, and Mrs. Grant's wasteful doings to overlook, left her very
little occasion to be occupied in fears for the absent.

The Miss Bertrams were now fully established among the belles of the
neighbourhood; and as they joined to beauty and brilliant acquirements
a manner naturally easy, and carefully formed to general civility and
obligingness, they possessed its favour as well as its admiration. Their
vanity was in such good order that they seemed to be quite free from it,
and gave themselves no airs; while the praises attending such behaviour,
secured and brought round by their aunt, served to strengthen them in
believing they had no faults.

Lady Bertram did not go into public with her daughters. She was too
indolent even to accept a mother's gratification in witnessing their
success and enjoyment at the expense of any personal trouble, and the
charge was made over to her sister, who desired nothing better than a
post of such honourable representation, and very thoroughly relished
the means it afforded her of mixing in society without having horses to
hire.

Fanny had no share in the festivities of the season; but she enjoyed
being avowedly useful as her aunt's companion when they called away the
rest of the family; and, as Miss Lee had left Mansfield, she naturally
became everything to Lady Bertram during the night of a ball or a party.
She talked to her, listened to her, read to her; and the tranquillity
of such evenings, her perfect security in such a _tete-a-tete_ from any
sound of unkindness, was unspeakably welcome to a mind which had seldom
known a pause in its alarms or embarrassments. As to her cousins'
gaieties, she loved to hear an account of them, especially of the
balls, and whom Edmund had danced with; but thought too lowly of her
own situation to imagine she should ever be admitted to the same, and
listened, therefore, without an idea of any near