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"This was so thoughtful and kind!" and would he only
have smiled upon her, and called her "my dear Fanny,"
while he said it, every former frown or cold address
might have been forgotten. But he had ended his speech
in a way to sink her in sad mortification, by adding,
"If William does come to Mansfield, I hope you may be able
to convince him that the many years which have passed
since you parted have not been spent on your side entirely
without improvement; though, I fear, he must find his sister
at sixteen in some respects too much like his sister at ten."
She cried bitterly over this reflection when her uncle
was gone; and her cousins, on seeing her with red eyes,
set her down as a hypocrite.



CHAPTER IV

Tom Bertram had of late spent so little of his time at
home that he could be only nominally missed; and Lady
Bertram was soon astonished to find how very well they
did even without his father, how well Edmund could
supply his place in carving, talking to the steward,
writing to the attorney, settling with the servants,
and equally saving her from all possible fatigue or exertion
in every particular but that of directing her letters.

The earliest intelligence of the travellers' safe arrival
at Antigua, after a favourable voyage, was received;
though not before Mrs. Norris had been indulging in very
dreadful fears, and trying to make Edmund participate them
whenever she could get him alone; and as she depended
on being the first person made acquainted with any
fatal catastrophe, she had already arranged the manner of
breaking it to all the others, when Sir Thomas's assurances
of their both being alive and well made it necessary to lay
by her agitation and affectionate preparatory speeches for a while.

The winter came and passed without their being
called for; the accounts continued perfectly good;
and Mrs. Norris, in promoting gaieties for her nieces,
assisting their toilets, displaying their accomplishments,
and looking about for their future husbands, had so much
to do as, in addition to all her own household cares,
some interference in those of her sister, and Mrs. Grant's
wasteful doings to overlook, left her very little occasion
to be occupied in fears for the absent.

The Miss Bertrams were now fully established among the
belles of the neighbourhood; and as they joined to beauty
and brilliant acquirements a manner naturally easy,
and carefully formed to general civility and obligingness,
they possessed its favour as well as its admiration.
Their vanity was in such good order that they seemed
to be quite free from it, and gave themselves no airs;
while the praises attending such behaviour, secured and
brought round by their aunt, served to strengthen them in
believing they had no faults.

Lady Bertram did not go into public with her daughters.
She was too indolent even to accept a mother's gratification
in witnessing their success and enjoyment at the expense
of any personal trouble, and the charge was made over

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