As to Mr. Crawford, she hoped it might give him a knowledge of his own disposition, convince him that he was not capable of being steadily attached to any one woman in the world, and shame him from persisting any longer in addressing herself.

It was very strange! She had begun to think he really loved her, and to fancy his affection for her something more than common. Even his sister still said that he cared for nobody else. Yet—there must have been some marked display of attentions to her cousin. There must have been some strong indiscretion—since her correspondent was not of a sort to regard a slight one.

Very uncomfortable Fanny was, and must continue, till she heard from Miss Crawford again. It was impossible to banish the letter from her thoughts, and she could not relieve herself by speaking of it to any human being.

The next day came and brought no second letter. Fanny was disappointed. She could still think of little else, when her father came back in the afternoon with the daily newspaper as usual; she was so far from expecting any elucidation through such a channel that the subject was for a moment out of her head.

She was deep in other musing. The remembrance of her first evening in that room, of her father and his newspaper, came across her. No candle was now wanted. The sun was yet an hour and a half above the horizon.

She felt that she had, indeed, been three months there. The sun’s rays falling strongly into the parlour, instead of cheering, made her still more melancholy—sunshine appeared to her a totally different thing here. Its power was only a stifling, sickly glare, serving but to bring forward stains and dirt that might otherwise have slept. There was neither health nor gaiety in sunshine in a town.

Fanny sat in a blaze of oppressive heat, in a cloud of moving dust, and her eyes could only wander from the walls, marked by her father’s head, to the table cut and notched by her brothers, where stood the tea-board never thoroughly cleaned, the cups and saucers wiped in streaks, the milk a mixture of motes floating in thin blue, and the bread and butter growing every minute more greasy than even Rebecca’s hands had first produced it.

Her father read his newspaper, and her mother lamented over the ragged carpet as usual, while the tea was in preparation, and wished Rebecca would mend it instead of dallying with pockmarked louts.

Fanny was first roused by her father’s calling out to her, after humphing and considering over a particular paragraph: “What’s the name of your great cousins in town, Fan?”

A moment’s recollection enabled her to say, “Rushworth, sir.”

“And don’t they live in Wimpole Street?”

“Yes, sir.”