“This distressing intelligence, as you may suppose,” observed her ladyship, after giving the substance of it, “has agitated us exceedingly. We are greatly alarmed and apprehensive for the poor invalid, whose state Sir Thomas fears may be very critical. Edmund kindly proposes attending his brother immediately, but I am happy to add that Sir Thomas will not leave me on this distressing occasion, as it would be too trying for me. We shall greatly miss Edmund in our small circle, but I trust he will find the poor invalid in a less alarming state than might be apprehended, and that he will be able to bring him to Mansfield shortly. Sir Thomas thinks it best, and the poor sufferer will soon be able to bear the removal without inconvenience or injury. As I have little doubt of your feeling for us, my dear Fanny, under these distressing circumstances, I will write again very soon.”

Fanny’s feelings on the occasion were indeed considerably more warm and genuine than her aunt’s style of writing. She felt truly for them all. Tom dangerously ill, Edmund gone to attend him, the sadly small party remaining at Mansfield—these were cares to shut out almost every other care.

She could just find selfishness enough to wonder whether Edmund had written to Miss Crawford before this summons came. But this was soon replaced with purely affectionate altruistic anxiety.

Her aunt did not neglect her: she wrote again and again. They were receiving frequent accounts from Edmund, and these were as regularly transmitted to Fanny, in the same diffuse style, and the same medley of trusts, hopes, and fears, all following and producing each other at haphazard. It was a sort of playing at being frightened.

The sufferings which Lady Bertram did not see had little power over her fancy; and she wrote very comfortably about agitation, and anxiety, and poor invalids—till Tom was actually conveyed to Mansfield, and her own eyes had beheld his altered appearance. Then, her letter to Fanny was finished in a different style, in the language of real feeling and alarm—she wrote as she might have spoken.

“He is just come, my dear Fanny, and is taken upstairs; and I am so shocked to see him, that I do not know what to do. I am sure he has been very ill. Poor Tom! I am quite grieved for him, and very much frightened, and so is Sir Thomas; and how glad I should be if you were here to comfort me. But Sir Thomas hopes he will be better to-morrow, and says we must consider his journey.”

The real solicitude now awakened in the maternal bosom was not soon over. Tom’s extreme impatience to be removed to Mansfield, and the comforts of home and family, had probably induced his being conveyed thither too early. A return of fever came on, and for a week he was in a more alarming state than ever.