As I have little doubt of your feeling for us, my dear Fanny,
under these distressing circumstances, I will write again
very soon."
Fanny's feelings on the occasion were indeed considerably
more warm and genuine than her aunt's style of writing.
She felt truly for them all. Tom dangerously ill,
Edmund gone to attend him, and the sadly small party
remaining at Mansfield, were cares to shut out every
other care, or almost every other. She could just find
selfishness enough to wonder whether Edmund _had_ written
to Miss Crawford before this summons came, but no sentiment
dwelt long with her that was not purely affectionate and
disinterestedly anxious. Her aunt did not neglect her:
she wrote again and again; they were receiving frequent
accounts from Edmund, and these accounts were as regularly
transmitted to Fanny, in the same diffuse style,
and the same medley of trusts, hopes, and fears,
all following and producing each other at haphazard.
It was a sort of playing at being frightened.
The sufferings which Lady Bertram did not see had little
power over her fancy; and she wrote very comfortably
about agitation, and anxiety, and poor invalids, till Tom
was actually conveyed to Mansfield, and her own eyes had
beheld his altered appearance.
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