hing so
dear; for as to any partnership in Thornton Lacey, as Edmund Bertram
once good-humouredly proposed, I hope I foresee two objections: two
fair, excellent, irresistible objections to that plan."

Fanny was doubly silenced here; though when the moment was passed,
could regret that she had not forced herself into the acknowledged
comprehension of one half of his meaning, and encouraged him to say
something more of his sister and Edmund. It was a subject which she must
learn to speak of, and the weakness that shrunk from it would soon be
quite unpardonable.

When Mr. Price and his friend had seen all that they wished, or had time
for, the others were ready to return; and in the course of their walk
back, Mr. Crawford contrived a minute's privacy for telling Fanny that
his only business in Portsmouth was to see her; that he was come down
for a couple of days on her account, and hers only, and because he could
not endure a longer total separation. She was sorry, really sorry; and
yet in spite of this and the two or three other things which she wished
he had not said, she thought him altogether improved since she had seen
him; he was much more gentle, obliging, and attentive to other people's
feelings than he had ever been at Mansfield; she had never seen him so
agreeable--so _near_ being agreeable; his behaviour to her father could
not offend, and there was something particularly kind and proper in the
notice he took of Susan. He was decidedly improved. She wished the next
day over, she wished he had come only for one day; but it was not
so very bad as she would have expected: the pleasure of talking of
Mansfield was so very great!

Before they parted, she had to thank him for another pleasure, and one
of no trivial kind. Her father asked him to do them the honour of taking
his mutton with them, and Fanny had time for only one thrill of horror,
before he declared himself prevented by a prior engagement. He was
engaged to dinner already both for that day and the next; he had met
with some acquaintance at the Crown who would not be denied; he should
have the honour, however, of waiting on them again on the morrow, etc.,
and so they parted--Fanny in a state of actual felicity from escaping so
horrible an evil!

To have had him join their family dinner-party, and see all their
deficiencies, would have been dreadful! Rebecca's cookery and Rebecca's
waiting, and Betsey's eating at table without restraint, and pulling
ev