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_Her_ store-room, she thought, might have been good enough
for Mrs. Grant to go into. Inquire where she would,
she could not find out that Mrs. Grant had ever had more
than five thousand pounds."

Lady Bertram listened without much interest to this
sort of invective. She could not enter into the wrongs
of an economist, but she felt all the injuries of beauty
in Mrs. Grant's being so well settled in life without
being handsome, and expressed her astonishment on
that point almost as often, though not so diffusely,
as Mrs. Norris discussed the other.

These opinions had been hardly canvassed a year before
another event arose of such importance in the family,
as might fairly claim some place in the thoughts and
conversation of the ladies. Sir Thomas found it expedient
to go to Antigua himself, for the better arrangement
of his affairs, and he took his eldest son with him,
in the hope of detaching him from some bad connexions
at home. They left England with the probability of being
nearly a twelvemonth absent.

The necessity of the measure in a pecuniary light,
and the hope of its utility to his son, reconciled Sir
Thomas to the effort of quitting the rest of his family,
and of leaving his daughters to the direction of others
at their present most interesting time of life.
He could not think Lady Bertram quite equal to supply his
place with them, or rather, to perform what should have
been her own; but, in Mrs. Norris's watchful attention,
and in Edmund's judgment, he had sufficient confidence
to make him go without fears for their conduct.

Lady Bertram did not at all like to have her husband leave her;
but she was not disturbed by any alarm for his safety,
or solicitude for his comfort, being one of those persons
who think nothing can be dangerous, or difficult,
or fatiguing to anybody but themselves.

The Miss Bertrams were much to be pitied on the occasion:
not for their sorrow, but for their want of it.
Their father was no object of love to them; he had never
seemed the friend of their pleasures, and his absence
was unhappily most welcome. They were relieved by it from
all restraint; and without aiming at one gratification
that would probably have been forbidden by Sir Thomas,
they felt themselves immediately at their own disposal,
and to have every indulgence within their reach.
Fanny's relief, and her consciousness of it, were quite
equal to her cousins'; but a more tender nature suggested
that her feelings were ungrateful, and she really
grieved because she could not grieve. "Sir Thomas,
who had done so much for her and her brothers, and who was
gone perhaps never to return! that she should see him
go without a tear! it was a shameful insensibility."
He had said to her, moreover, on the very last morning,
that he hoped she might see William again in the course
of the ensuing winter, and had charged her to write
and invite him to Mansfield as soon as the squadron
to which he belonged should be known to be in England.

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