But Miss Price had not been brought up to the trade of coming out[22]; and had she known in what light this ball was considered respecting her, it would very much have lessened her comfort by increasing the fears she already had of doing wrong and being looked at. To dance without much observation or any extraordinary fatigue, to have strength and partners for about half the evening, to dance a little with Edmund, and not a great deal with Mr. Crawford, to see William enjoy himself, and be able to keep away from her aunt Norris, was the height of her ambition.

As these were the best of her hopes, they could not always prevail. In the course of a long morning, spent principally with her two aunts, she was often under the influence of much less sanguine views. William, determined to make this last day a day of thorough enjoyment, was out snipe-shooting; Edmund was likely at the Parsonage; and Fanny was left alone to bear the worrying and teeth-gnashing of Mrs. Norris, of all things on the eve of the full moon!

Moreover, Mrs. Norris was particularly cross because the housekeeper would have her own way with the ball supper. Her, Fanny could not avoid, though the housekeeper might.

Fanny was worn down at last into thinking that everything pertaining to the ball was a horrid evil. When sent off with a parting worry to dress, she moved languidly towards her own room, and felt decidedly incapable of happiness.

As she walked slowly upstairs she thought of yesterday. Her musings were interrupted around the corner by the sight of another shabby-skinned mummified fellow in the process of sipping the breath of life from yet another innocent lamb of a maid. The maid hug limp over a banister. And if she moved but one wrong inch, she might tumble and hurt herself! The mummy was leaning over her, his horrible mouth over the maid’s ear, using the opening to reach through to her inner being and claim her life force.

“Oh, for goodness sake!” exclaimed Fanny, hurrying her step to reach the top landing where the unholy scene was being enacted. “You—whoever you are! In the name of Heaven, stop it!”

The mummy naturally ignored her.

Upon my word, Fanny thought, what was it with these things? They grew more insolent by the hour, going about their feeding business in plain sight! The first time or two Fanny had been unsure, but now she was certain. The many coffin-sized crates piled all over the estate, the endless strange parade of loutish servants, their abysmal hanging strips of dead skin, indeed their horrific maggot-crawling visage when disturbed—these were creatures undead, exhumed from their many thousand-year-old Egyptian resting place by some zealous doctorate-endowed idiot, and then somehow returned to life, no doubt by some equally idiot action of Lady Bertram. . . .

And what of Lord Eastwind? He had to be involved—