Furthermore, she was full of jealousy and agitation. Miss Crawford came with looks of gaiety which seemed an insult, with friendly expressions towards herself which she could hardly answer calmly. Everybody around her was gay[15] and busy and important; each had their part, their dress, their favourite scene, their friends and confederates. She alone was sad and insignificant, with no share in anything. She might go or stay, be in the midst of their noise, or retreat to the solitude of the East room, without being seen or missed. She could almost think anything would have been preferable to this.

In addition, Mrs. Grant, who took the role first offered to Fanny, suddenly gained consequence. She was now popular, wanted and praised. Fanny was in some danger of envying her the character she had accepted; but then thought better of it.

It was at such a moment that Lord Eastwind once again made himself available and stepped away from the shadows, it seemed, to address her.

“What do you dream about, Miss Price? Is there something that you long for, besides being needed by the denizens of this foolish play? Or is there only one among them who touches your heart?”

“My poor heart, I beg you, is not a trifle, and I would rather not speak of it altogether.”

“Nay, your heart is farther from a trifle than the sun is from the feather of a falcon.”

And he stood looking at her closely, so that Fanny felt a tremor run down her spine, as though a hot ancient wind of a faraway land washed over her—but for a moment only.”

Mr. Rushworth interrupted the strange reverie by passing between them attired as a pink-and-chartreuse peacock of high fashion, and declaiming the same two lines interspersed with barking, or possibly just hiccoughs, and a phlegmy clearing of his larynx.

As a wind recedes, Lord Eastwind faded back into the shadows.

But, Fanny’s heart was not the only saddened one amongst them, as she soon began to acknowledge to herself. Julia was a sufferer too, though not quite so blamelessly.

Henry Crawford had trifled with Julia’s feelings. But she had long allowed and even sought his attentions, jealous of her sister. And now that his preference for Maria had been revealed to her, she submitted to it without any alarm for Maria’s situation. She either sat in gloomy silence, wrapt in such gravity as nothing could subdue; or, allowing the attentions of Mr. Yates, talked with forced gaiety to him alone, ridiculing the acting of the others and pretending a newfound interest in—of all things—the excavations of Egypt.