When it came to the moment of parting, he would take her hand, he would not be denied it. He said nothing, however, or nothing that she heard. And when he had left the room, she was better pleased that such a token of friendship had passed.

On the morrow the Crawfords were gone.

And yet—something altogether different was in the air.

Chapter XXXVII

Mr. Crawford gone, Sir Thomas’s next object was that he should be missed by Fanny. Sir Thomas entertained great hope, watched her closely, but he could hardly tell if there was any change. She was always so gentle and retiring that her emotions were beyond his discrimination. He did not understand her, and therefore applied to Edmund to tell him how she was.

Edmund did not discern any symptoms of regret, and thought his father a little unreasonable in supposing the first three or four days could produce any.

What chiefly surprised Edmund was, that Crawford’s sister, the friend and companion who had been so much to her (he thought), should not be more visibly regretted. He wondered that Fanny spoke so seldom of her.

Alas! it was this sister, this friend and companion, who was now the chief bane of Fanny’s comfort. If she could have believed Mary’s future fate as unconnected with Mansfield as she was determined the brother’s should be, she would have been light of heart indeed.

But the more Fanny thought, the more deeply was she convinced that everything was now in a fairer train for Miss Crawford’s marrying Edmund than it had ever been before. His inclination was stronger, hers less equivocal. His objections, the scruples of his integrity, seemed all done away; doubts and hesitations were equally got over—and equally without apparent reason. It had to be increasing attachment.

His good and her bad—indeed, dark—feelings yielded to love, and such love must unite them.

Edmund was to go to town soon; he talked of going, he loved to talk of it. And once he was with Miss Crawford again, Fanny could not doubt the rest. Her acceptance must be as certain as his offer. The prospect of it all was most grievous and harrowing to Fanny.

In their very last conversation, Miss Crawford, in spite of some amiable sensations, and attempts at bizarre personal kindness, had still been the same undead Miss Crawford; still led astray and bewildered, and (on so many levels) darkened, yet fancying herself growing toward light.

She might “love,” in her own perverse, unnatural way, but she did not deserve Edmund by any other sentiment—even had she been fully human.

Fanny believed there was scarcely a second feeling in common between them, and chances of future improvement near impossible. For—if Edmund’s influence in this season of love had already done so little in transforming her, his consequent effort would be fully wasted in the years of matrimony.