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not follow. Miss Crawford's attractions did not lessen.
The harp arrived, and rather added to her beauty, wit,
and good-humour; for she played with the greatest obligingness,
with an expression and taste which were peculiarly becoming,
and there was something clever to be said at the close
of every air. Edmund was at the Parsonage every day,
to be indulged with his favourite instrument:
one morning secured an invitation for the next;
for the lady could not be unwilling to have a listener,
and every thing was soon in a fair train.

A young woman, pretty, lively, with a harp as
elegant as herself, and both placed near a window,
cut down to the ground, and opening on a little lawn,
surrounded by shrubs in the rich foliage of summer,
was enough to catch any man's heart. The season, the scene,
the air, were all favourable to tenderness and sentiment.
Mrs. Grant and her tambour frame were not without their use:
it was all in harmony; and as everything will turn to account
when love is once set going, even the sandwich tray,
and Dr. Grant doing the honours of it, were worth looking at.
Without studying the business, however, or knowing
what he was about, Edmund was beginning, at the end
of a week of such intercourse, to be a good deal in love;
and to the credit of the lady it may be added that,
without his being a man of the world or an elder brother,
without any of the arts of flattery or the gaieties of
small talk, he began to be agreeable to her. She felt it
to be so, though she had not foreseen, and could hardly
understand it; for he was not pleasant by any common rule:
he talked no nonsense; he paid no compliments; his opinions
were unbending, his attentions tranquil and simple.
There was a charm, perhaps, in his sincerity, his steadiness,
his integrity, which Miss Crawford might be equal
to feel, though not equal to discuss with herself.
She did not think very much about it, however: he pleased
her for the present; she liked to have him near her;
it was enough.

Fanny could not wonder that Edmund was at the Parsonage
every morning; she would gladly have been there too,
might she have gone in uninvited and unnoticed, to hear
the harp; neither could she wonder that, when the evening
stroll was over, and the two families parted again,
he should think it right to attend Mrs. Grant and her
sister to their home, while Mr. Crawford was devoted
to the ladies of the Park; but she thought it a very
bad exchange; and if Edmund were not there to mix the wine
and water for her, would rather go without it than not.
She was a little surprised that he could spend so many
hours with Miss Crawford, and not see more of the sort
of fault which he had already observed, and of which _she_
was almost always reminded by a something of the same
nature whenever she was in her company; but so it was.
Edmund was fond of speaking to her of Miss Crawford,
but he seemed to think it enough that the Admiral had
since been spared; and she scrupled to point out her own

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