"How can you, sir? You quite astonish me; I wonder how you can--"

"Do I astonish you?" said he. "Do you wonder? Is there anything in
my present entreaty that you do not understand? I will explain to you
instantly all that makes me urge you in this manner, all that gives me
an interest in what you look and do, and excites my present curiosity. I
will not leave you to wonder long."

In spite of herself, she could not help half a smile, but she said
nothing.

"You shook your head at my acknowledging that I should not like to
engage in the duties of a clergyman always for a constancy. Yes, that
was the word. Constancy: I am not afraid of the word. I would spell it,
read it, write it with anybody. I see nothing alarming in the word. Did
you think I ought?"

"Perhaps, sir," said Fanny, wearied at last into speaking--"perhaps,
sir, I thought it was a pity you did not always know yourself as well as
you seemed to do at that moment."

Crawford, delighted to get her to speak at any rate, was determined
to keep it up; and poor Fanny, who had hoped to silence him by such an
extremity of reproof, found herself sadly mistaken, and that it was only
a change from one object of curiosity and one set of words to another.
He had always something to entreat the explanation of. The opportunity
was too fair. None such had occurred since his seeing her in her uncle's
room, none such might occur again before his leaving Mansfield. Lady
Bertram's being just on the other side of the table was a trifle,
for she might always be considered as only half-awake, and Edmund's
advertisements were still of the first utility.

"Well," said Crawford, after a course of rapid questions and reluctant
answers; "I am happier than I was, because I now understand more clearly
your opinion of me. You think me unsteady: easily swayed by the whim of
the moment, easily tempted, easily put aside. With such an opinion, no
wonder that. But we shall see. It is not by protestations that I shall
endeavour to convince you I am wronged; it is not by telling you that my
affections are steady. My conduct shall speak for me; absence, distance,
time shall speak for me. _They_ shall prove that, as far as you can be
deserved by anybody, I do deserve you. You are infinitely my superior
in merit; all _that_ I know. You have qualities which I had not before
supposed to exist in such a degree in any human creature. You have some
touches of the angel in you beyond what--not me