“Why should you dare say that?” (smiling). “Do you want to be told that you are only unlike other people in being more wise and discreet?”

“No,” replied Fanny with a sigh, breaching a certain taboo subject. “I am indeed unlike other people—for I seem to observe and perceive certain things that others do not, and to be unaffected by certain other things that everyone else is affected by.”

Edmund became serious. “Of what do you speak, Fanny?”

And Fanny could not hold back any longer. “Oh, cousin!” she exclaimed. “Did you not yourself unveil to me the dark Curse of this household, when we were but children? You would speak innocently and at length of it then. You would make plans for how to confront and Exorcise the evil! But now, it seems, your memory and your vision have both closed up, and you are hardly aware of the compounding unnatural strangeness that has been going on at Mansfield Park! Miss Crawford is a vampire! Your own aunt, Mrs. Norris, and I dare say Mr. Rushworth, are both blatant werewolves (and everyone knows about those two and yet you all chuse to overlook the fact, and the relentless growling)! Your mother is possessed by some unspeakable ancient Egyptian force and frequently speaks in tongues! Just yesterday, Mr. Yates had an army of beetles coming out of his mouth! And—and Lord Eastwind? Why is it that no one notices him, when he is surely at the heart of it all?”

“Why, hush, Fanny! Please, be not so loud, when you speak of the Curse,” Edmund began to whisper. And then grew silent in consternation. A moment later he added, “Wait—Lord East Who?”

In that very instant, Fanny wanted to take herself upstairs to her little room and repeatedly strike her forehead against the wall or the little writing-desk. . . .

“Lord Eastwind,” she repeated in a loud intense whisper, and pointed. “Look, Edmund! Look, in the name of all that is good and right, look over there—see him? He is sitting in that chair next to Lady Bertram.”

But Edmund blinked, and leaned forward. “Fanny, dearest Fanny, I am sorry, but I do not see who you speak of. Indeed, there is no one there—”

In that moment Lord Eastwind, as though aware he was the subject of discussion, turned his attention from Lady Bertram and gave Fanny his unblinking gaze, and then, a subtle smile.

Unwilling to speak of the Curse, Edmund changed the subject to rather surprising, new, and happier things.

“Ask your uncle what he thinks of you, Fanny, and you will hear compliments.”

Such language was so new to Fanny that it quite embarrassed her.