prove yourself to be in your senses as soon as you can by a different
conduct; nothing else will satisfy them. But this is teasing you. I have
done. Do not turn away from me."

"I _should_ have thought," said Fanny, after a pause of recollection and
exertion, "that every woman must have felt the possibility of a man's
not being approved, not being loved by some one of her sex at least, let
him be ever so generally agreeable. Let him have all the perfections
in the world, I think it ought not to be set down as certain that a man
must be acceptable to every woman he may happen to like himself. But,
even supposing it is so, allowing Mr. Crawford to have all the claims
which his sisters think he has, how was I to be prepared to meet him
with any feeling answerable to his own? He took me wholly by surprise.
I had not an idea that his behaviour to me before had any meaning; and
surely I was not to be teaching myself to like him only because he was
taking what seemed very idle notice of me. In my situation, it would
have been the extreme of vanity to be forming expectations on Mr.
Crawford. I am sure his sisters, rating him as they do, must have
thought it so, supposing he had meant nothing. How, then, was I to
be--to be in love with him the moment he said he was with me? How was I
to have an attachment at his service, as soon as it was asked for? His
sisters should consider me as well as him. The higher his deserts, the
more improper for me ever to have thought of him. And, and--we think
very differently of the nature of women, if they can imagine a woman so
very soon capable of returning an affection as this seems to imply."

"My dear, dear Fanny, now I have the truth. I know this to be the truth;
and most worthy of you are such feelings. I had attributed them to you
before. I thought I could understand you. You have now given exactly
the explanation which I ventured to make for you to your friend and Mrs.
Grant, and they were both better satisfied, though your warm-hearted
friend was still run away with a little by the enthusiasm of her
fondness for Henry. I told them that you were of all human creatures the
one over whom habit had most power and novelty least; and that the very
circumstance of the novelty of Crawford's addresses was against him.
Their being so new and so recent was all in their disfavour; that you
could tolerate nothing that you were not used to; and a great deal more
to the same purpose, to give them a k