en place, from which Edmund derived only increased
distress, had been as anxious on that account as on others to get him
out of town, and had engaged him in taking Fanny home to her aunt, with
a view to his relief and benefit, no less than theirs. Fanny was not in
the secret of her uncle's feelings, Sir Thomas not in the secret of Miss
Crawford's character. Had he been privy to her conversation with his
son, he would not have wished her to belong to him, though her twenty
thousand pounds had been forty.

That Edmund must be for ever divided from Miss Crawford did not admit
of a doubt with Fanny; and yet, till she knew that he felt the same, her
own conviction was insufficient. She thought he did, but she wanted to
be assured of it. If he would now speak to her with the unreserve which
had sometimes been too much for her before, it would be most consoling;
but _that_ she found was not to be. She seldom saw him: never alone. He
probably avoided being alone with her. What was to be inferred? That
his judgment submitted to all his own peculiar and bitter share of this
family affliction, but that it was too keenly felt to be a subject of
the slightest communication. This must be his state. He yielded, but it
was with agonies which did not admit of speech. Long, long would it be
ere Miss Crawford's name passed his lips again, or she could hope for a
renewal of such confidential intercourse as had been.

It _was_ long. They reached Mansfield on Thursday, and it was not till
Sunday evening that Edmund began to talk to her on the subject. Sitting
with her on Sunday evening--a wet Sunday evening--the very time of
all others when, if a friend is at hand, the heart must be opened, and
everything told; no one else in the room, except his mother, who,
after hearing an affecting sermon, had cried herself to sleep, it was
impossible not to speak; and so, with the usual beginnings, hardly to
be traced as to what came first, and the usual declaration that if she
would listen to him for a few minutes, he should be very brief, and
certainly never tax her kindness in the same way again; she need not
fear a repetition; it would be a subject prohibited entirely: he entered
upon the luxury of relating circumstances and sensations of the first
interest to himself, to one of whose affectionate sympathy he was quite
convinced.

How Fanny listened, with what curiosity and concern, what pain and what
delight, how the agitation of his voice was wa