sfield with spirits ready
to feed on melancholy remembrances, and tender associations, when her
own fair self was before him, leaning on her brother's arm, and he found
himself receiving a welcome, unquestionably friendly, from the woman
whom, two moments before, he had been thinking of as seventy miles off,
and as farther, much farther, from him in inclination than any distance
could express.

Her reception of him was of a sort which he could not have hoped
for, had he expected to see her. Coming as he did from such a purport
fulfilled as had taken him away, he would have expected anything rather
than a look of satisfaction, and words of simple, pleasant meaning.
It was enough to set his heart in a glow, and to bring him home in the
properest state for feeling the full value of the other joyful surprises
at hand.

William's promotion, with all its particulars, he was soon master of;
and with such a secret provision of comfort within his own breast to
help the joy, he found in it a source of most gratifying sensation and
unvarying cheerfulness all dinner-time.

After dinner, when he and his father were alone, he had Fanny's history;
and then all the great events of the last fortnight, and the present
situation of matters at Mansfield were known to him.

Fanny suspected what was going on. They sat so much longer than usual in
the dining-parlour, that she was sure they must be talking of her; and
when tea at last brought them away, and she was to be seen by Edmund
again, she felt dreadfully guilty. He came to her, sat down by her, took
her hand, and pressed it kindly; and at that moment she thought that,
but for the occupation and the scene which the tea-things afforded, she
must have betrayed her emotion in some unpardonable excess.

He was not intending, however, by such action, to be conveying to her
that unqualified approbation and encouragement which her hopes drew
from it. It was designed only to express his participation in all that
interested her, and to tell her that he had been hearing what quickened
every feeling of affection. He was, in fact, entirely on his father's
side of the question. His surprise was not so great as his father's at
her refusing Crawford, because, so far from supposing her to consider
him with anything like a preference, he had always believed it to
be rather the reverse, and could imagine her to be taken perfectly
unprepared, but Sir Thomas could not regard the connexion as more
des