Fanny parted her lips to reply, but he turned away. And with another elegant tip of the hat to everyone, he was on his way, walking at a fast pace.

“But—wait!” cried Mr. Price in his wake. “Good sir, won’t you have a bite of mutton at my place? Surely you must be thanked properly!”

But in the next blink, Eastwind had turned the corner and was gone.

“Well, blimey! Well, shiver me timbers!” said both Mr. Price and his officer friend simultaneously.

After a pause where they all milled about, glaring behind them at the frozen lot of dead Egyptians, and around them for more mummies, Mr. Crawford cleared his throat politely. “I suggest we move along,” he said. “Now then—” And as though nothing had happened, he offered his arms to Fanny on one side, and Susan on the other.

Fanny’s mind and spirit were reeling—least of all because of the mummies.

The conversation took several long minutes to settle, what with Susan asking many pointed questions, and her father muttering, “All right, who exactly were those villains? Would someone care to explain? Were they asylum inmates? Or, maybe prison escapees? Although, where does it take for a man to be incarcerated, to have his skin rot to such a measure? Now those were some ugly bast—”

Mr. Crawford skillfully avoided making any definitive answers, and instead turned the talk to Mansfield. He could not have chosen better. That was a topic to bring back Fanny’s attention and her looks almost instantly.

Now in particular, it was a real indulgence to her to hear or to speak of Mansfield. So long divided from everybody who knew the place, and now with Lord Eastwind’s brief appearance to serve as a bittersweet reminder, she felt it quite the voice of a friend when Crawford mentioned it. It led the way to her fond exclamations in praise of its beauties and comforts, speaking of her uncle as all that was clever and good, and her aunt as having the sweetest of all sweet tempers.

“But aunt Bertram awakened those mummies!” Susan pointed out in all reasonableness.

“Hush, dear,” replied Fanny gently. “We shall talk of that later—”

Mr. Crawford admitted to having a great attachment to Mansfield himself. He looked forward to spending very much of his time there, or in the neighbourhood. He particularly expected a very happy summer and autumn there this year; infinitely superior to the last, and under much better circumstances.

“Mansfield, Sotherton, Thornton Lacey,” he continued; “What a society will be comprised in those houses! And at Michaelmas, perhaps, a fourth may be added: some small hunting-box in the vicinity of everything so dear; for as to any partnership in Thornton Lacey, as Edmund Bertram once good-humouredly proposed, I hope I foresee two excellent, irresistible objections to that plan.”