“Of course,” continued her uncle, “if he should request to speak with you alone, be it only for five minutes; such a request ought not to be denied. But there is no time fixed; perhaps whenever your spirits are composed enough. For the present you have only to calm yourself. Check these tears; they do but exhaust you. I advise you to go out: the air will do you good; go out for an hour on the gravel; you will have the shrubbery to yourself. And, Fanny” (turning back again for a moment), “I shall make no mention below of what has passed; I shall not even tell your aunt Bertram. There is no occasion for spreading the disappointment. Say nothing about it yourself.”

This was an order to be most joyfully obeyed, a true act of kindness. To be spared from her aunt Norris’s interminable reproaches! he left her in a glow of gratitude. Anything might be bearable rather than reproaches. Even to see Mr. Crawford would be less overpowering.

She walked out directly, as her uncle recommended. She quelled her tears and calmed her face, to keep the whole affair from the knowledge of her aunts—anything that might save her from her aunt Norris.

She was struck, when, on returning from her walk and going into the East room again, the first thing which caught her eye was a fire lighted and burning. A fire! Such an indulgence, at this time! She wondered that Sir Thomas had remembered. The housemaid who came in to attend it, mentioned it was to be so every day. Sir Thomas had given orders for it.

“I must be a brute, indeed, if I can be really ungrateful!” said Fanny, to herself.

At dinner, her uncle’s behaviour to her was unchanged. But her aunt Norris was soon quarrelling with her when she found that Fanny went on a walk without her knowledge.

“If I had known you were going out, I should have got you to go as far as my house with some orders for Nanny,” said Mrs. Norris, and continued to rant about some people taking walks in the shrubbery.

Speak not to me about shrubbery! Fanny thought bitterly, visualizing Mrs. Norris rampaging there earlier that morning.

“I recommended the shrubbery to Fanny as the driest place,” said Sir Thomas. He, too, thought: The driest place, and for once you were not there.

“Oh!” said Mrs. Norris, with a moment’s check, “that was very kind of you, Sir Thomas; but you do not know how dry the path is to my house.”

“Dry, and now surely barren of vermin, I suppose,” he mumbled under his nose and into his soup, so that no one could hear. “It must be the shrubbery now bears the brunt of invasion.”