and her own imagination added that there must be a mind to be properly
guided.

The family were not consumptive, and she was more inclined to hope than
fear for her cousin, except when she thought of Miss Crawford; but Miss
Crawford gave her the idea of being the child of good luck, and to her
selfishness and vanity it would be good luck to have Edmund the only
son.

Even in the sick chamber the fortunate Mary was not forgotten. Edmund's
letter had this postscript. "On the subject of my last, I had actually
begun a letter when called away by Tom's illness, but I have now changed
my mind, and fear to trust the influence of friends. When Tom is better,
I shall go."

Such was the state of Mansfield, and so it continued, with scarcely any
change, till Easter. A line occasionally added by Edmund to his
mother's letter was enough for Fanny's information. Tom's amendment was
alarmingly slow.

Easter came particularly late this year, as Fanny had most sorrowfully
considered, on first learning that she had no chance of leaving
Portsmouth till after it. It came, and she had yet heard nothing of her
return--nothing even of the going to London, which was to precede
her return. Her aunt often expressed a wish for her, but there was no
notice, no message from the uncle on whom all depended. She supposed
he could not yet leave his son, but it was a cruel, a terrible delay
to her. The end of April was coming on; it would soon be almost three
months, instead of two, that she had been absent from them all, and that
her days had been passing in a state of penance, which she loved them
too well to hope they would thoroughly understand; and who could yet say
when there might be leisure to think of or fetch her?

Her eagerness, her impatience, her longings to be with them, were such
as to bring a line or two of Cowper's Tirocinium for ever before her.
"With what intense desire she wants her home," was continually on her
tongue, as the truest description of a yearning which she could not
suppose any schoolboy's bosom to feel more keenly.

When she had been coming to Portsmouth, she had loved to call it her
home, had been fond of saying that she was going home; the word had
been very dear to her, and so it still was, but it must be applied to
Mansfield. _That_ was now the home. Portsmouth was Portsmouth; Mansfield
was home. They had been long so arranged in the indulgence of her secret
meditations, and nothing was more consolatory to