'The only woman in the world
whom he could ever think of as a wife.' I firmly
believe it. It is an attachment to govern his whole life.
Accepted or refused, his heart is wedded to her for ever.
'The loss of Mary I must consider as comprehending the loss
of Crawford and Fanny.' Edmund, you do not know me.
The families would never be connected if you did not
connect them! Oh! write, write. Finish it at once.
Let there be an end of this suspense. Fix, commit,
condemn yourself."
Such sensations, however, were too near akin to
resentment to be long guiding Fanny's soliloquies.
She was soon more softened and sorrowful. His warm regard,
his kind expressions, his confidential treatment,
touched her strongly. He was only too good to everybody.
It was a letter, in short, which she would not but have had
for the world, and which could never be valued enough.
This was the end of it.
Everybody at all addicted to letter-writing, without
having much to say, which will include a large proportion
of the female world at least, must feel with Lady Bertram
that she was out of luck in having such a capital piece of
Mansfield news as the certainty of the Grants going to Bath,
occur at a time when she could make no advantage of it,
and will admit that it must have been very mortifying
to her to see it fall to the share of her thankless son,
and treated as concisely as possible at the end of a
long letter, instead of having it to spread over the largest
part of a page of her own.
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