“I wish you were not so tired,” said he, still detaining Fanny after all the others were in the house—“I wish I left you in stronger health. I wish—Is there anything I can do for you in town? I have half an idea of going into Norfolk again soon.” And Mr. Crawford proceeded to give the details of his estate business and property issues with an agent in his employ, concluding with: “Shall I go? Do you advise it?”

“I advise! You know very well what is right,” said Fanny gently.

“Yes. When you give me your opinion, I always know what is right. Your judgment is my rule of right.”

“Oh, no! do not say so. We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be. Good-bye; I wish you a pleasant journey to-morrow.”

“Is there nothing I can do for you in town?”

“Nothing; I am much obliged to you.”

“Have you no message for anybody?”

“My love to your sister, if you please. And when you see my cousin, my cousin Edmund, I wish you would be so good as to say that I suppose I shall soon hear from him.”

“Certainly; and if he is lazy or negligent, I will write his excuses myself.”

Mr. Crawford could say no more, for Fanny would be no longer detained.

He pressed her hand, looked at her, and was gone.

He went to while away the next three hours as he could, with his other acquaintance, till the best dinner that a capital inn afforded was ready for their enjoyment, and she turned in to her more simple one immediately.

Their general fare bore a very different character; and could Mr. Crawford have suspected how many privations, besides that of exercise, she endured in her father’s house, he would have wondered that her looks were not much more affected than he found them.

She was so little equal to Rebecca’s puddings and Rebecca’s hashes, brought to table with half-cleaned plates, and not half-cleaned knives and forks, that she was very often constrained to defer her heartiest meal till she could send her brothers in the evening for biscuits and buns. After being nursed up at Mansfield, it was too late in the day to be hardened at Portsmouth. And though Sir Thomas, had he known all, might have thought his niece in the most promising way of being starved, both mind and body, into a much juster value for Mr. Crawford’s good company and good fortune, he would probably have feared to push his experiment farther, lest she might die under the cure.