As she now sat looking at Betsey, she could not but think particularly of another sister, a very pretty little girl, whom she had left there not much younger when she went into Northamptonshire, who had died a few years afterwards. There had been something remarkably amiable about her. Is it not so with all the dead? But no, do not think—

Fanny in those early days had preferred her to Susan. And when the news of her death had at last reached Mansfield, she had been quite afflicted. The sight of Betsey brought the image of little Mary back again. But she would not have pained her mother by alluding to her for the world. While considering her thus, Fanny noticed that Betsey was holding out something to catch her eyes, meaning to screen it at the same time from Susan’s.

“What have you got there, my love?” said Fanny; “come and shew it to me.”

It was a silver knife.

Silver is a pure holy metal, used as a defense against the dark—werewolves can die from it, vampires will be marked and harmed—Fanny remembered Edmund telling all this to her once; oh so long ago it seemed, when they still regularly discussed the Mansfield Curse.

Up jumped Susan, claiming the knife as her own, and trying to get it away. But the child ran to her mother’s protection, and Susan could only reproach, which she did very warmly, and evidently hoping to interest Fanny on her side. “It was very hard that she was not to have her own knife; it was her own knife; little sister Mary had left it to her upon her deathbed, and she ought to have had it to keep herself long ago. But mama kept it from her, and was always letting Betsey get hold of it; Betsey would spoil it, and get it for her own, though mama had promised her that Betsey should not have it.”

Fanny was quite shocked. Every feeling of duty, honour, and tenderness was wounded by her sister’s speech and her mother’s reply.