“Now do not make yourself uneasy with any queer fancies because he has been spending a few days at Richmond. He does it every spring. Be assured he cares for nobody but you. At this very moment he is wild to see you, and occupied only in contriving the means for doing so. In proof, he repeats, and more eagerly, what he said at Portsmouth about our conveying you home, and I join him in it with all my dark but insightful soul. Dear Fanny, write directly, and tell us to come. It will do us all good. He and I can go to the Parsonage, and be no trouble to our friends at Mansfield Park. It would really be gratifying to see them all again, and a little addition of society might be of infinite use to them. As to yourself, you must feel yourself to be so wanted there, that you cannot in conscience keep away, when you have the means of returning. I have not time or patience to give half Henry’s messages; be satisfied that the spirit of each and every one is unalterable affection.”

Fanny’s disgust at the greater part of this letter, and her extreme reluctance to bring Mary and her cousin Edmund together, would have made her incapable of responding either to accept or decline the concluding offer.

To herself, individually, it was most tempting. To be finding herself, perhaps within three days, transported to Mansfield, was an image of the greatest felicity. But it would have been a drawback to owe such felicity to persons whose feelings and conduct she condemned—the sister’s feelings, the brother’s conduct, her cold-hearted ambition, his thoughtless vanity. To have him still the acquaintance, the flirt perhaps, of Mrs. Rushworth!

She was mortified. She had thought better of him. Happily, however, she was not left to weigh and decide between opposite inclinations. There was no occasion to determine whether to keep Edmund and Mary asunder. Her awe of her uncle, and her dread of taking a liberty with him, made it instantly plain to her what she had to do.

She must absolutely decline the proposal. If he wanted, Sir Thomas would send for her. Even to suggest an early return was a presumption.

She thanked Miss Crawford, but gave a decided negative. “Her uncle, she understood, meant to fetch her; and as her cousin’s illness had continued so many weeks without her being thought at all necessary, she must suppose her return would be unwelcome at present, and that she might be an encumbrance.”