“I am not very sanguine as to our play,” said Miss Crawford, in an undervoice to Fanny, “and I can tell Mr. Maddox that I shall shorten some of our common speeches before we rehearse together. It will be very disagreeable, and by no means what I expected.”

Chapter XVI

It was not in Miss Crawford’s power to talk Fanny into any real forgetfulness of what had passed. When the evening was over, she went to bed full of it, still agitated by the shock of such an attack from her cousin Tom, and her spirits sinking under her aunt’s unkind reproach. To be called into notice in such a manner, coerced to act; and then to have the charge of obstinate ingratitude, with such a hint at her dependent situation! Miss Crawford had protected her only for the time. If they were all to pressure her again, what should she do?

She fell asleep before she could answer the question, dreaming for some reason of dark intense eyes and a searing hot wind in a distant ancient desert, and found it quite as puzzling when she awoke the next morning. The little white attic, which had continued as her sleeping-room ever since her first entering the family, was intolerable—not to mention being situated so near Lady Bertram’s favorite forbidden room with its Cursed horrors, which Fanny was beginning to suspect were somehow related not merely to Egypt but to a certain Lord Eastwind and his sudden insinuating presence in the family.

It was fortunate that she had recourse, as soon as she was dressed, to another more spacious and agreeable apartment. It had once been their school-room. Miss Lee had lived there, and there they had read and written, talked and laughed. The room had since become unused and quite deserted, except by Fanny. There she visited her plants and books, kept there due to the deficiency of space in her little chamber above.

Gradually Fanny moved there more of her possessions, and spent more of her time there. With no one to oppose her, she naturally and artlessly worked herself into it. The East room, as it had been called ever since Maria Bertram was sixteen, was now considered Fanny’s, almost as decidedly as the white attic. The Miss Bertrams, with their own superior apartments, entirely approved it. And Mrs. Norris, having stipulated for there never being a fire in it on Fanny’s account, was tolerably resigned to her having the use of what nobody else wanted—though she would then imply it was the best room in the house.