Fanny had no share in the festivities of the season. But she enjoyed being useful as her aunt’s companion when they called away the rest of the family. As Miss Lee had left Mansfield, she naturally became everything to Lady Bertram during the night of a ball or a party. She talked, listened, read to her. The tranquility of such evenings, her perfect security in such a tête-à-tête from any sound of unkindness, was unspeakably welcome to a mind which had seldom known a pause in its alarms or embarrassments.

“You are quite an amiable girl,” said Lady Bertram in a rare endearing mood, on one such cozy evening, “and you are ready, I am certain. I must soon take you to a certain room in the attic near your own, and you shall make acquaintance of—”

“I thank you, aunt,” replied Fanny, putting aside a scholarly excavations journal from which she had been reading. She had a very good notion of what her aunt was hinting at, since she could hear the noises every night and they were getting more prominent. Besides, Lady Bertram was in a new habit of sleepwalking and talking, in what sounded like foreign tongues. And this notion put Fanny in a momentary state of dread. So far, in all her myriad errands, she had managed to avoid accompanying her aunt there.

“Later, then. Later, when the Nile rises and overflows its banks. But, do go on now, read.”

Thus, for the moment, a visit to the dark unknown was averted, with or without the threat of a flood.

As to her cousins’ gaieties, Fanny loved to hear an account of them, especially of the balls, and whom Edmund had danced with. She thought too lowly of her own situation to imagine she should ever be admitted to the same, and listened without personal aspirations. Upon the whole, it was a comfortable winter to her—though it brought no William to England, the never-failing hope of his arrival was worth much, and the Cursed mysteries remained dormant.

The ensuing spring deprived her of her valued friend, the old grey pony. For some time she was in danger of feeling the loss in her health as well as in her affections. For in spite of the acknowledged importance of her riding on horse-back, no measures were taken for mounting[4] her again, “because,” as it was observed by her aunts, “she might ride one of her cousin’s horses at any time when they did not want them.”