"
The week which passed so quietly and peaceably at the
great house in Mansfield had a very different character at
the Parsonage. To the young lady, at least, in each family,
it brought very different feelings. What was tranquillity
and comfort to Fanny was tediousness and vexation to Mary.
Something arose from difference of disposition and habit:
one so easily satisfied, the other so unused to endure;
but still more might be imputed to difference
of circumstances. In some points of interest they
were exactly opposed to each other. To Fanny's mind,
Edmund's absence was really, in its cause and its tendency,
a relief. To Mary it was every way painful. She felt
the want of his society every day, almost every hour,
and was too much in want of it to derive anything but
irritation from considering the object for which he went.
He could not have devised anything more likely to raise
his consequence than this week's absence, occurring as
it did at the very time of her brother's going away,
of William Price's going too, and completing the sort
of general break-up of a party which had been so animated.
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