At first, it was a sort of stupefaction. But every moment was quickening her perception of the horrible evil. She could not doubt or, she dared not hope, of the paragraph being false. Miss Crawford’s letter was in frightful conformity with it. Her eager defense of her brother, her hope of its being hushed up, her evident agitation—were all of a piece with something very bad. And if there was a woman of character in existence, who could treat as a trifle this sin of the first magnitude, who would try to gloss it over, and desire to have it unpunished, she could believe Miss Crawford to be the woman! Now she could see her own mistake as to who were gone, or said to be gone. It was not Mr. and Mrs. Rushworth; it was Mrs. Rushworth and Mr. Crawford.

It seemed to Fanny she had never been shocked to such an extent, ever. There was no end to it.

The evening passed without a pause of misery, the night was totally sleepless. She passed from feelings of sickness to shudderings of horror, from fevered hot to cold.

The event was so shocking, that there were moments even when her heart revolted from it as impossible—it could not be. A woman married only six months ago; a man professing himself devoted, even engaged to another; that other her near relation; both families connected as they were by tie upon tie; all friends, all intimate together! It was too horrible a confusion of guilt, too gross a complication of evil, for human nature, not in a state of utter barbarism[30], to be capable of!

Yet her judgment told her it was so. His unsettled affections, wavering with his vanity, Maria’s decided attachment—and no sufficient principle on either side—gave it possibility: Miss Crawford’s letter stampt it a fact.

What would be the consequence? Whom would it not injure? Whose views might it not affect? Whose peace would it not cut up for ever? Miss Crawford, herself, Edmund—but it was dangerous, perhaps, to tread such ground.

She confined herself to the simple, indubitable family misery which must envelop all, if it were indeed a matter of certified guilt and public exposure. The mother’s sufferings, the father’s; there she paused. Julia’s, Tom’s, Edmund’s; there was yet a longer pause. They were the two on whom it would fall most horribly. Sir Thomas’s parental solicitude and high sense of honour and decorum, Edmund’s upright principles, unsuspicious temper, and genuine strength of feeling, made her think it scarcely possible for them to support life and reason under such disgrace. And it appeared to her that, as far as this world alone was concerned, the greatest blessing to every one of kindred with Mrs. Rushworth would be instant annihilation.

Indeed, in a mad rush of emotion, Fanny regretted that the mummies had quitted Mansfield Park. . . .