Austen Said:

if reading could banish the idea for even half an hour, it was something gained.

Either his going had been again delayed, or he had yet procured no opportunity of seeing Miss Crawford alone, or he was too happy for letter-writing!

she could not regret it;

She was ashamed, and she would have been yet more ashamed of her father than of all the rest.

He had reached it late the night before, was come for a day or two, was staying at the Crown, had accidentally met with a navy officer or two of his acquaintance since his arrival,

he had spent half an hour with his sister the evening before his leaving London;

she had sent her best and kindest love, but had had no time for writing;

he thought himself lucky in seeing Mary for even half an hour, having spent scarcely twenty-four hours in London, after his return from Norfolk, before he set off again;

her cousin Edmund was in town, had been in town, he understood, a few days;

he had not seen him himself, but

he was well, had left them all well at Mansfield, and was to dine, as yesterday, with the Frasers.

He must be ashamed and disgusted altogether. He must soon give her up, and cease to have the smallest inclination for the match;

if the Miss Prices were not afraid of the fatigue;

It had been real business, relative to the renewal of a lease in which the welfare of a large and— he believed —industrious family was at stake. He had suspected his agent of some underhand dealing; of meaning to bias him against the deserving; and he had determined to go himself, and thoroughly investigate the merits of the case. He had gone, had done even more good than he had foreseen, had been useful to more than his first plan had comprehended, and was now able to congratulate himself upon it, and to feel that in performing a duty, he had secured agreeable recollections for his own mind. He had introduced himself to some tenants whom he had never seen before; he had begun making acquaintance with cottages whose very existence, though on his own estate, had been hitherto unknown to him.

here he had been acting as he ought to do. To be the friend of the poor and the oppressed!

his hoping soon to have an assistant, a friend, a guide in every plan of utility or charity for Everingham: a somebody that would make Everingham and all about it a dearer object than it had ever been yet.

he might have more good qualities than she had been wont to suppose.

but he was and must ever be completely unsuited to her, and ought not to think of her.

her uncle as all that was clever and good, and her aunt as having the sweetest of all sweet tempers.

He had a great attachment to Mansfield himself;

he looked forward with the hope of spending much, very much, of his time there; always there, or in the neighbourhood. He particularly built upon a very happy summer and autumn there this year; he felt that it would be so: he depended upon it; a summer and autumn infinitely superior to the last. As animated, as diversified, as social, but with circumstances of superiority undescribable.

she had not forced herself into the acknowledged comprehension of one half of his meaning, and encouraged him to say something more of his sister and Edmund.

It was a subject which she must learn to speak of, and the weakness that shrunk from it would soon be quite unpardonable.

his only business in Portsmouth was to see her; that he was come down for a couple of days on her account, and hers only, and because he could not endure a longer total separation.

he was much more gentle, obliging, and attentive to other people's feelings than he had ever been at Mansfield; she had never seen him so agreeable— so near being agreeable; his behaviour to her father could not offend, and there was something particularly kind and proper in the notice he took of Susan. He was decidedly improved.

but it was not so very bad as she would have expected:

the pleasure of talking of Mansfield was so very great!

himself prevented by a prior engagement. He was engaged to dinner already both for that day and the next; he had met with some acquaintance at the Crown who would not be denied; he should have the honour, however, of waiting on them again on the morrow, etc.,

To have had him join their family dinner-party, and see all their deficiencies, would have been dreadful! Rebecca's cookery and Rebecca's waiting, and Betsey's eating at table without restraint, and pulling everything about as she chose,

Her poor mother now did not look so very unworthy of being Lady Bertram's sister as she was but too apt to look.

where nature had made so little difference, circumstances should have made so much, and

her mother, as handsome as Lady Bertram, and some years her junior, should have an appearance so much more worn and faded, so comfortless, so slatternly, so shabby.

though as bewitching as ever, her face was less blooming than it ought to be. She said she was very well, and did not like to be supposed otherwise; but take it all in all,

that her present residence could not be comfortable, and therefore could not be salutary for her,

It was parting with somebody of the nature of a friend; and though, in one light, glad to have him gone, it seemed as if she was now deserted by everybody; it was a sort of renewed separation from Mansfield;

his being astonishingly more gentle and regardful of others than formerly.

And, if in little things, must it not be so in great? So anxious for her health and comfort, so very feeling as he now expressed himself, and really seemed, might not it be fairly supposed that he would not much longer persevere in a suit so distressing to her?

Henry has been down to Portsmouth to see you;

he had a delightful walk with you to the dockyard last Saturday, and one still more to be dwelt on the next day, on the ramparts; when the balmy air, the sparkling sea, and your sweet looks and conversation were altogether in the most delicious harmony, and afforded sensations which are to raise ecstasy even in retrospect.

his introduction to your family, especially to a fair sister of yours, a fine girl of fifteen, who was of the party on the ramparts,

going into Norfolk again upon some business that you approve;

The only certainty to be drawn from it was, that nothing decisive had yet taken place. Edmund had not yet spoken.

How Miss Crawford really felt, how she meant to act, or might act without or against her meaning; whether his importance to her were quite what it had been before the last separation; whether, if lessened, it were likely to lessen more, or to recover itself,

Miss Crawford, after proving herself cooled and staggered by a return to London habits, would yet prove herself in the end too much attached to him to give him up. She would try to be more ambitious than her heart would allow. She would hesitate, she would tease, she would condition, she would require a great deal, but she would finally accept.

A house in town— that,

must be impossible. Yet there was no saying what Miss Crawford might not ask. The prospect for her cousin grew worse and worse. The woman who could speak of him, and speak only of his appearance! What an unworthy attachment! To be deriving support from the commendations of Mrs. Fraser! She who had known him intimately half a year!

Whether Mr. Crawford went into Norfolk before or after the 14th was certainly no concern of hers, though, everything considered,

he would go without delay. That Miss Crawford should endeavour to secure a meeting between him and Mrs. Rushworth, was all in her worst line of conduct, and grossly unkind and ill-judged; but

he would not be actuated by any such degrading curiosity. He acknowledged no such inducement, and his sister ought to have given him credit for better feelings than her own.

If Mr. Crawford remembered her message to her cousin,