“The Miss Owens—you liked them, did not you?”

“Yes, very well. But I am spoilt, Fanny, for common female society. Good-humoured, unaffected girls will not do for a man who has been used to sensible women. You and Miss Crawford have made me too particular.”

Still, however, Fanny was oppressed and wearied. He saw it in her looks; it could not be talked away. With kindness, he returned her into the house.

Chapter XXXVI

Edmund now believed himself perfectly acquainted with all that Fanny could tell, and he was satisfied. Crawford had been too hasty. Time must be given to make the idea first familiar, and then agreeable to her. Once used to his being in love with her, a return of affection might follow.

He recommended to his father that nothing more be said to her, to influence or persuade. That everything should be left to Crawford, and the natural workings of her own mind.

Sir Thomas agreed it should be so. His only concern was that she might take too long, and the young man’s inclination for her would be over.

The promised visit from Miss Crawford was a formidable threat to Fanny, and she lived in continual terror of it. Miss Crawford was an object of painful alarm—both as a sister, partial and angry, so little scrupulous of what she said, and as a vampire who might decide to extract unholy revenge. Her displeasure and her happiness were all fearful to encounter. Fanny’s only hope was to have others present when they met. She absented herself as little as possible from Lady Bertram, kept away from the East room, and took no solitary walk in the shrubbery, in her caution to avoid any sudden attack (and here one does not imply Mrs. Norris). And now she always wore William’s cross. . . .

She succeeded. She was safe in the breakfast-room, with her aunt, when Miss Crawford did come. The first misery over, and Miss Crawford looking and speaking with much less particularity than she had anticipated, Fanny began to hope there would be nothing worse to be endured than a half-hour of moderate agitation.

But here she hoped too much. Miss Crawford was determined to see Fanny alone, and said to her in a low voice, “I must speak to you for a few minutes somewhere;” dark words that Fanny felt all over her, in all her pulses and all her nerves. Denial was impossible. Her habits of ready submission, made her almost instantly rise and lead the way out of the room. She did it with wretched feelings, but it was inevitable.

It was as if the vampire was controlling her not by unnatural means but by force of a guilty conscience. Evil has no power over me, thought Fanny ruefully, but duty does.