nce, especially than her sister, Lady Stornaway,
and is the determined supporter of everything mercenary and ambitious,
provided it be only mercenary and ambitious enough. I look upon her
intimacy with those two sisters as the greatest misfortune of her life
and mine. They have been leading her astray for years. Could she be
detached from them!--and sometimes I do not despair of it, for the
affection appears to me principally on their side. They are very fond of
her; but I am sure she does not love them as she loves you. When I think
of her great attachment to you, indeed, and the whole of her judicious,
upright conduct as a sister, she appears a very different creature,
capable of everything noble, and I am ready to blame myself for a too
harsh construction of a playful manner. I cannot give her up, Fanny. She
is the only woman in the world whom I could ever think of as a wife. If
I did not believe that she had some regard for me, of course I should
not say this, but I do believe it. I am convinced that she is not
without a decided preference. I have no jealousy of any individual. It
is the influence of the fashionable world altogether that I am jealous
of. It is the habits of wealth that I fear. Her ideas are not higher
than her own fortune may warrant, but they are beyond what our incomes
united could authorise. There is comfort, however, even here. I could
better bear to lose her because not rich enough, than because of my
profession. That would only prove her affection not equal to sacrifices,
which, in fact, I am scarcely justified in asking; and, if I am refused,
that, I think, will be the honest motive. Her prejudices, I trust, are
not so strong as they were. You have my thoughts exactly as they arise,
my dear Fanny; perhaps they are sometimes contradictory, but it will
not be a less faithful picture of my mind. Having once begun, it is a
pleasure to me to tell you all I feel. I cannot give her up. Connected
as we already are, and, I hope, are to be, to give up Mary Crawford
would be to give up the society of some of those most dear to me; to
banish myself from the very houses and friends whom, under any other
distress, I should turn to for consolation. The loss of Mary I must
consider as comprehending the loss of Crawford and of Fanny. Were it a
decided thing, an actual refusal, I hope I should know how to bear it,
and how to endeavour to weaken her hold on my heart, and in the course
of a few years--but I am wri