Anyone addicted to letter-writing without having much to say (this includes a large proportion of the female world), must feel that Lady Bertram was cheated of being the one to relate such a capital piece of Mansfield news as the certainty of the Grants going to Bath—cheated by her thankless son who used only a sentence where she would have spread it over a whole page. For though Lady Bertram rather shone in the epistolary line (having early in her marriage, from the want of other employment, and the circumstance of Sir Thomas’s being in Parliament, got into the way of making and keeping correspondents, and thus embroiled herself in the archeological quagmire of Ancient Egypt), and formed a fine writing style, in which little substance was enough for a long missive: she could not do entirely without any. She must have something to write about, even to her niece; and being so soon to lose all the benefit of Dr. Grant’s gouty symptoms and Mrs. Grant’s morning calls, it was very hard upon her to be deprived of one of the last epistolary uses she could put them to.

There was a rich amends, however, preparing for her. Lady Bertram’s hour of good luck came. Within a few days from the receipt of Edmund’s letter, Fanny had one from her aunt, beginning thus—

“My Dear Fanny,—

I take up my pen to communicate some very alarming intelligence, which I make no doubt will give you much concern”.

This was a great deal better than mere particulars of the Grants’ intended journey. Indeed, the present intelligence was of a nature to promise occupation for the pen for many days to come, being no less than the dangerous illness of her eldest son, of which they had received notice by express a few hours before.

Tom had gone from London with a party of young men to Newmarket, where a neglected fall after foolishly attempting to scale a wall without a rope, and a good deal of drinking had brought on a fever. When the party broke up, he was unable to move, and had been left by himself at the house of one of these young men, in sickness, solitude, and the attendance only of servants. Instead of a speedy recovery and the rejoining of his friends, his illness increased considerably. It was not long before he was so ill that his physician sent a letter to Mansfield.