“I must hope better things. I wish he had not been obliged to tell you what he was trying for. I wish he had known you as well as I do, Fanny. Between us, I think we should have won you. My theoretical and his practical knowledge together could not have failed. I cannot suppose that you have not the wish to love him—the natural wish of gratitude. You must be sorry for your own indifference.”

“We are so totally unlike,” said Fanny, avoiding a direct answer, “in all our inclinations and ways, that I consider it as quite impossible we should ever be tolerably happy together, even if I could like him. Completely dissimilar, we have not one taste in common. We should be miserable.”

“You are mistaken, Fanny. The dissimilarity is not so strong. You are quite enough alike. You have tastes in common: moral and literary tastes, warm hearts and benevolent feelings. And, Fanny—after hearing him read, and seeing you listen to Shakespeare the other night—who will think you unfitted as companions? There is a decided difference in your tempers, I allow. He is lively, you are serious; but so much the better: his spirits will support yours. It is your disposition to be easily dejected and to fancy difficulties greater than they are. His cheerfulness will counteract this. He sees difficulties nowhere: and his pleasantness and gaiety will be a constant support to you. I am convinced, you have a strong probability of happiness together.”

Full well could Fanny guess where his thoughts were now: Miss Crawford’s power was all returning. Ah, the wretched vampire with control over his heart! His avoiding her was quite at an end. He had dined at the Parsonage only the preceding day.

After leaving him to his happier thoughts for some minutes, Fanny returned to the discussion of Mr. Crawford. “It is not merely in temper and spirits that I consider him totally unsuited to myself. But there is something in him to which I object still more. I cannot approve his character. I have not thought well of him from the time of the play. I then saw him behaving so very improperly and unfeelingly by poor afflicted Mr. Rushworth, not caring how he exposed or hurt him, and paying attentions to my cousin Maria. In short, at the time of the play, I received an impression which will never be got over.”

“My dear Fanny,” replied Edmund, scarcely hearing her, “let us not, any of us, be judged by what we appeared at that period of general folly. That is a time which I hate to recollect. Maria was wrong, Crawford was wrong, we were all wrong together; but none so wrong as myself. Compared with me, all the rest were blameless. I was playing the fool with my eyes open.”

You still are, she thought sadly.