The subtle influence of the Mummy grew and grew. With time, as it dreamed of its ancient beloved land, and the house came to be filled with the very items that surrounded him three thousand years ago, it began to call upon others of its kind, and hence, more crates, more deliveries, more other mummies. A certain other minor amulet liberated from its supernaturally protected case unleashed a rather unrelated local beast spirit—local to Britain and of the lupine variety—which immediately took possession of the first unoccupied human being who happened to be Mrs. Norris, creeping up the stairs to the attic where Lady Bertram (occupied by the Mummy’s powerful influence and therefore not an option herself) stood mesmerized, opening and activating items at random, including that fateful amulet.

At the time of our narrative, when Fanny was witness to the departure of Sir Thomas to take care of business in Antigua, the situation with the mummies and the grand Mummy was ripe, shall we say—ripe for an explosion of sorts.

The household was being left to their own devices. The Miss Bertrams were much to be pitied on the occasion: not for their sorrow, but for their want of it. Their father was no object of love to them; he had never seemed the friend of their pleasures, and his absence was unhappily most welcome. They were relieved by it from all restraint; and without aiming at one gratification that would probably have been forbidden by Sir Thomas, they felt themselves immediately at their own disposal, and to have every indulgence within their reach.

Fanny’s unconscious relief was quite equal to her cousins’. But a more tender nature suggested that her feelings were ungrateful, and she really grieved because she could not grieve. “Sir Thomas, who had done so much for her and her brothers, and who was gone perhaps never to return! that she should see him go without a tear! a shameful insensibility.”

He had said to her, moreover, on the very last morning, that he hoped she might see William again in the course of the ensuing winter, and had charged her to write and invite him to Mansfield as soon as the squadron to which he belonged was in England. “This was so thoughtful and kind!”

Had he but smiled upon her, and called her “my dear Fanny,” every former frown or cold address might have been forgotten. But he had ended his speech in a way to sink her in sad mortification, by adding, “If William does come to Mansfield, I hope you convince him that your years here have not been spent entirely without improvement. Though, I fear, he must find his sister at sixteen in some respects too much like his sister at ten.”

She cried bitterly over this reflection when her uncle was gone; and her cousins, on seeing her with red eyes, set her down as a hypocrite.

Chapter IV