Fanny spoke her feelings“Here’s harmony!” said...
Fanny spoke her feelings“Here’s harmony!” said she;
“here’s repose! Here’s what may leave all painting and all music behind,
and what poetry only can attempt to describe! Here’s what
may tranquillise every care, and lift the heart to rapture! When I
look out on such a night as this, I feel as if there could be neither
wickedness nor sorrow in the world; and there certainly would be
less of both if the sublimity of Nature were more attended to, and
people were carried more out of themselves by contemplating such
a scene
“I like to hear your enthusiasm, FannyIt is a lovely night, and
they are much to be pitied who have not been taught to feel, in
some degree, as you do; who have not, at least, been given a taste for
Nature in early lifeThey lose a great deal
“You taught me to think and feel on the subject, cousin
“I had a very apt scholarThere’s Arcturus looking very brightI wish I could see Cassiopeia
“We must go out on the lawn for thatShould you be afraid?”
“Not in the leastIt is a great while since we have had any stargazing
“Yes; I do not know how it has happened“We
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will stay till this is finished, Fanny,” said he, turning his back on the
window; and as it advanced, she had the mortification of seeing
him advance too, moving forward by gentle degrees towards the
instrument, and when it ceased, he was close by the singers, among
the most urgent in requesting to hear the glee again
Fanny sighed alone at the window till scolded away by MrsNorris’s
threats of catching cold
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CHAPTER XII
SIR discount tiffany's necklace THOMAS was to return in November, and his eldest son had
duties to call him earlier homeThe approach of September brought
tidings of MrBertram, first in a letter to the gamekeeper and then
in a letter to Edmund; and by the end of August he arrived himself,
to be gay, agreeable, and gallant again as occasion served, or Miss
Crawford demanded; to tell of races and Weymouth, and parties
and friends, to which she might have listened six weeks before with
some interest, and altogether to give her the fullest conviction, by
the power of actual comparison, of her preferring his younger brother
It was very vexatious, and she was heartily sorry for it; but so it was;
and so far from now meaning to marry the elder, she did not even
want to attract him beyond what the simplest claims of conscious
beauty required: his lengthened absence from Mansfield, without
anything but pleasure in view, and his own will to consult, made it
perfectly clear that he did not care about her; and his indifference was
so much more than equalled by her own, that were he now to step
forth the owner of Mansfield Park, the Sir Thomas complete, which
he was to be in time, she did not believe she could accept him
The season and duties which brought MrBertram back to
Mansfield took MrCrawford into NorfolkEveringham could not
do without him in the beginning of SeptemberHe went for a fortnight—
a fortnight of such dullness to the Miss Bertrams as ought
to have put them both on their guard, and made even Julia admit,
in her jealousy of her sister, the absolute necessity of prada bags online distrusting his
attentions, and wishing him not to return; and a fortnight of sufficient
leisure, in the intervals of shooting and sleeping, to have convinced
the gentleman that he ought to keep longer away, had he
been more in the habit of examining his own motives, and of reflecting
to what the indulgence of his idle vanity was tending; but,
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thoughtless and selfish from prosperity and bad example, he would
not look beyond the present momentThe sisters, handsome, clever,
and encouraging, were an amusement to his sated mind; and finding
nothing in Norfolk to equal the social pleasures of Mansfield,
he gladly returned to it at the time appointed, and was welcomed
thither quite as gladly by those whom he came to trifle with furtherRushworth to attend to her, and doomed to
the repeated details of his day’s sport, good or bad, his boast of his
dogs, his jealousy of his neighbours, his doubts of their qualifications,
and his zeal after poachers, subjects which will not find their
way to female feelings without some talent on one side or some
attachment on the other, had missed MrCrawford grievously; and
Julia, unengaged and unemployed, felt all the right of missing him
much moreEach sister believed herself the favouriteJulia might
be justified in so doing by the hints of MrsGrant, inclined to credit
what she wished, and Maria by the hints of Mr
Everything returned into the same channel as before his absence;
his manners being to each so animated and agreeable as to lose no
ground with either, and just stopping short classic chanel handbag of the consistence, the
steadiness, the solicitude, and the warmth which might excite general
notice
Fanny was the only one of the party who found anything to dislike;
but since the day at Sotherton, she could never see MrCrawford
with either sister without observation, and seldom without wonder
or censure; and had her confidence in her own judgment been equal
to her exercise of it in every other respect, had she been sure that she
was seeing clearly, and judging candidly, she would probably have
made some important communications to her usual confidantAs
it was, however, she only hazarded a hint, and the hint was lost“I
am rather surprised,” said she, “that MrCrawford should come
back again so soon, after being here so long before, full seven weeks;
for I had understood he was so very fond of change and moving
about, that I thought something would certainly occur, when he
was once gone, to take him elsewhereHe is used to much gayer
places than Mansfield
“It is to his credit,” was Edmund’s answer; “and I dare say it gives
his sister pleasureShe does not like his unsettled habits
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“What a favourite he is with my cousins!”
“Yes, his manners to women are such as must pleaseGrant,
I believe, suspects him of a preference for Julia; I have never seen
much symptom of it, but I wish it may be soHe has no faults but
what a serious attachment would remove
“If Miss Bertram were not engaged,” said Fanny cautiously, “I
could sometimes almost think that he admired her more than Julia
“Which is, perhaps, more in favour of chanel handbags on sale his liking Julia best, than
you, Fanny, may be aware; for I believe it often happens that a man,
before he has quite made up his own mind, will distinguish the
sister or intimate friend of the woman he is really thinking of more
than the woman herself Crawford has too much sense to stay here if
he found himself in any danger from Maria; and I am not at all
afraid for her, after such a proof as she has given that her feelings are
not strong
Fanny supposed she must have been mistaken, and meant to think
differently in future; but with all that submission to Edmund could
do, and all the help of the coinciding looks and hints which she
occasionally noticed in some of the others, and which seemed to say
that Julia was MrCrawford’s choice, she knew not always what to
thinkShe was privy, one evening, to the hopes of her aunt Norris
on the subject, as well as to her feelings, and the feelings of Mrs
Rushworth, on a point of some similarity, and could not help wondering
as she listened; and glad would she have been not to be obliged
to listen, for it was while all the other young people were dancing,
and she sitting, most unwillingly, among the chaperons at the fire,
longing for the re-entrance of her elder cousin, on whom all her own
hopes of a partner then dependedIt was Fanny’s first ball, though
without the preparation or splendour of many a young lady’s first
ball, being the thought only of the afternoon, built on the late acquisition
of a violin player in the servants’ hall, and the possibility of
raising five couple with the help of chanel black handbags M