His cheerfulness
will counteract this. He sees difficulties nowhere:
and his pleasantness and gaiety will be a constant support
to you. Your being so far unlike, Fanny, does not in
the smallest degree make against the probability of your
happiness together: do not imagine it. I am myself
convinced that it is rather a favourable circumstance.
I am perfectly persuaded that the tempers had better be unlike:
I mean unlike in the flow of the spirits, in the manners,
in the inclination for much or little company, in the
propensity to talk or to be silent, to be grave or to be gay.
Some opposition here is, I am thoroughly convinced,
friendly to matrimonial happiness. I exclude extremes,
of course; and a very close resemblance in all those
points would be the likeliest way to produce an extreme.
A counteraction, gentle and continual, is the best safeguard
of manners and conduct."
Full well could Fanny guess where his thoughts were now:
Miss Crawford's power was all returning. He had been
speaking of her cheerfully from the hour of his coming home.
His avoiding her was quite at an end.
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