He will make you happy, Fanny; I know he will make you happy;
but you will make him everything."
"I would not engage in such a charge," cried Fanny, in a
shrinking accent; "in such an office of high responsibility!"
"As usual, believing yourself unequal to anything!
fancying everything too much for you! Well, though I
may not be able to persuade you into different feelings,
you will be persuaded into them, I trust.
I confess myself sincerely anxious that you may.
I have no common interest in Crawford's well-doing. Next
to your happiness, Fanny, his has the first claim on me.
You are aware of my having no common interest in Crawford."
Fanny was too well aware of it to have anything to say;
and they walked on together some fifty yards in mutual
silence and abstraction. Edmund first began again--
"I was very much pleased by her manner of speaking
of it yesterday, particularly pleased, because I had not
depended upon her seeing everything in so just a light.
I knew she was very fond of you; but yet I was afraid
of her not estimating your worth to her brother quite
as it deserved, and of her regretting that he had not
rather fixed on some woman of distinction or fortune.
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