“You, Henry, are free to do the same. Or better yet, simply live your life and we may one day meet regardless. I leave you now forever in this lifetime. And in this parting, I wish you from my heart, only the best.”

She spoke thus, and left him, with her radiant face and gentle smile.

And her words haunted Henry Crawford till his last breath.

After what had passed to wound and alienate the two families, the continuance of the Bertrams and Grants in such close neighbourhood would have been most distressing. The extended absence of the latter ended very fortunately in the necessity of a permanent removal.

Dr. Grant succeeded to a stall in Westminster, which afforded an occasion for leaving Mansfield, an excuse for residence in London, and an increase of income—all highly acceptable to those who went and those who staid.

Mrs. Grant, with a loving temper, must have gone with some regret. But the same happiness of disposition must in any place, and any society, secure her a great deal to enjoy. She had again a home to offer Mary; and Mary had had enough of her own friends, vanity, ambition, twisted love, and disappointment in the course of the last half-year, to be in need of the true kindness and rational calm of her sister’s heart.

They lived together—even after Dr. Grant had brought on apoplexy and death, by three great institutionary dinners in one week. For Mary, though resolved against ever attaching herself to a younger brother again, was long in finding among the dashing representatives, or idle heir-apparents, who were at the command of her beauty, and her £20,000, any one who could satisfy the better taste she had acquired at Mansfield, whose character and manners could bring the domestic happiness she had learned to estimate, or who could put Edmund Bertram sufficiently out of her dark head.

Edmund had greatly the advantage of her in this respect. He had not to wait and wish with vacant affections for an object worthy to succeed her in them.

Scarcely had he done regretting Mary Crawford, and observing to Fanny how impossible it was that he should ever meet with such another woman, before it began to strike him whether a very different kind of woman might not do just as well, or a great deal better. Fanny herself was growing as dear, as important to him in all her smiles and all her ways, as Mary Crawford had ever been. It was possible, thought Edmund, to persuade her that her warm and sisterly regard for him would be foundation enough for wedded love.

In short, Edmund did cease to care about Miss Crawford, and became as anxious to marry Fanny as Fanny herself could desire.

With such a regard for her, as his had long been, founded on the most endearing claims of innocence and helplessness, and completed by growing worth, what could be more natural than the change?