The room was most dear to her, and she would not have
changed its furniture for the handsomest in the house,
though what had been originally plain had suffered all
the ill-usage of children; and its greatest elegancies
and ornaments were a faded footstool of Julia's work,
too ill done for the drawing-room, three transparencies,
made in a rage for transparencies, for the three lower
panes of one window, where Tintern Abbey held its station
between a cave in Italy and a moonlight lake in Cumberland,
a collection of family profiles, thought unworthy of being
anywhere else, over the mantelpiece, and by their side,
and pinned against the wall, a small sketch of a ship
sent four years ago from the Mediterranean by William,
with H.M.S. Antwerp at the bottom, in letters as tall as the
mainmast.
To this nest of comforts Fanny now walked down to try
its influence on an agitated, doubting spirit, to see
if by looking at Edmund's profile she could catch any of
his counsel, or by giving air to her geraniums she might
inhale a breeze of mental strength herself. But she had
more than fears of her own perseverance to remove: she had
begun to feel undecided as to what she _ought_ _to_ _do_;
and as she walked round the room her doubts were increasing.
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