For, when September came Sir Thomas was still abroad, and without any near prospect of finishing his business. Unfavourable circumstances had suddenly arisen at a moment when he was beginning to turn all his thoughts towards England. The great uncertainty convinced Sir Thomas to remain by himself and wait out the unfortunate business, while sending home his woeful idiot son—Tom had managed to procure in the local market a round-bellied rock that he thought a priceless statue of an Antigua fertility deity, so there went another £100.

Tom arrived safely, bringing an excellent account of his father’s health, and the said rock—but to very little purpose, as far as Mrs. Norris was concerned (very little purpose not as to the rock, but to as far as Tom’s safe return—to ahem—oh, criminy, whatever! gentle Reader, the meaning is apparent, and authorial words twist around and fail miserably at this juncture).

Furthermore, Sir Thomas’s sending away his son seemed to her so like a parent’s care, under the influence of a foreboding of evil to himself. Indeed, she could not help but feel dreadful presentiments. As the long evenings of autumn came on, Mrs. Norris was so terribly haunted by these ideas, in the sad solitariness of her cottage, as to be obliged to take daily refuge in the dining-room of the Park, even dangerously close to the times of a full moon.

The return of winter engagements, however, was not without its effect. In the course of their progress, her mind became so pleasantly occupied in superintending the fortunes of her eldest niece, as tolerably to quiet her nerves. “If poor Sir Thomas were fated never to return, it would be peculiarly consoling to see their dear Maria well married,” she very often thought; always when they were in the company of men of fortune, and particularly on the introduction of a young man who had recently succeeded to one of the largest estates and finest places in the country.

Mr. Rushworth was from the first struck with the beauty of Miss Bertram, and, being inclined to marry, soon fancied himself in love. He was a heavy young man, with not more than common sense; but as there was nothing disagreeable in his figure or address, the young lady was well pleased with her conquest. Being now in her twenty-first year, Maria Bertram was beginning to think matrimony a duty. Since a marriage with Mr. Rushworth would give her the enjoyment of a larger income than her father’s, a way to escape a domicile filled with exotic statuary and crates (as well as ensure her a fine house in town clear of all things Egyptian, which was now a prime object), it became, by the same rule of moral obligation, her evident duty to marry Mr. Rushworth if she could.