He became what he ought to be: useful to his father,
steady and quiet, and not living merely for himself.
Here was comfort indeed! and quite as soon as Sir
Thomas could place dependence on such sources of good,
Edmund was contributing to his father's ease by improvement
in the only point in which he had given him pain before--
improvement in his spirits. After wandering about and
sitting under trees with Fanny all the summer evenings,
he had so well talked his mind into submission as to be
very tolerably cheerful again.
These were the circumstances and the hopes which gradually
brought their alleviation to Sir Thomas, deadening his sense
of what was lost, and in part reconciling him to himself;
though the anguish arising from the conviction of his
own errors in the education of his daughters was never
to be entirely done away.
Too late he became aware how unfavourable to the character
of any young people must be the totally opposite treatment
which Maria and Julia had been always experiencing at home,
where the excessive indulgence and flattery of their aunt
had been continually contrasted with his own severity.
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