It was her intention, as she felt it to be her duty,
to try to overcome all that was excessive, all that
bordered on selfishness, in her affection for Edmund.
To call or to fancy it a loss, a disappointment, would be
a presumption for which she had not words strong enough to
satisfy her own humility. To think of him as Miss Crawford
might be justified in thinking, would in her be insanity.
To her he could be nothing under any circumstances;
nothing dearer than a friend. Why did such an idea occur
to her even enough to be reprobated and forbidden? It ought
not to have touched on the confines of her imagination.
She would endeavour to be rational, and to deserve
the right of judging of Miss Crawford's character,
and the privilege of true solicitude for him by a sound
intellect and an honest heart.
She had all the heroism of principle, and was determined
to do her duty; but having also many of the feelings of youth
and nature, let her not be much wondered at, if, after making
all these good resolutions on the side of self-government,
she seized the scrap of paper on which Edmund had begun
writing to her, as a treasure beyond all her hopes,
and reading with the tenderest emotion these words,
"My very dear Fanny, you must do me the favour to accept"
locked it up with the chain, as the dearest part of the gift.
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