Austen Said:

"I— I cannot like him, sir, well enough to marry him."

"Yes,"

she did feel almost ashamed of herself, after such a picture as her uncle had drawn, for not liking Mr. Crawford.

"Oh yes, sir! indeed I do. His attentions were always—what I did not like."

She would rather die than own the truth;

"Yes, sir."

"No, sir."

"But of his principles I have";

Self-willed, obstinate, selfish, and ungrateful. He thought her all this. She had deceived his expectations; she had lost his good opinion. What was to become of her?

"I am very sorry,"

"I am very sorry indeed."

"If it were possible for me to do otherwise"

"but I am so perfectly convinced that I could never make him happy, and that I should be miserable myself."

miserable

The past, present, future, everything was terrible.

Selfish and ungrateful! to have appeared so to him! She was miserable for ever. She had no one to take her part, to counsel, or speak for her. Her only friend was absent. He might have softened his father; but all, perhaps all, would think her selfish and ungrateful. She might have to endure the reproach again and again; she might hear it, or see it, or know it to exist for ever in every connexion about her.

yet, if he really loved her, and were unhappy too! It was all wretchedness together.

To be spared from her aunt Norris's interminable reproaches!

Anything might be bearable rather than such reproaches. Even to see Mr. Crawford would be less overpowering.

to prove to him that she did desire his comfort, and sought to regain his favour;

Not to excite suspicion by her look or manner was now an object worth attaining; and she felt equal to almost anything that might save her from her aunt Norris.

A fire! it seemed too much;

Sir Thomas could have leisure to think of such a trifle again;

so it was to be every day. Sir Thomas had given orders for it.

"I must be a brute, indeed, if I can be really ungrateful!"

"Heaven defend me from being ungrateful!"

he did not mean there should be any change, and

it was only her own conscience that could fancy any;

all the reason she had to bless the kindness which saved her from the same spirit of reproach, exerted on a more momentous subject.

"If I had known you were going out, I should have got you just to go as far as my house with some orders for Nanny,"

"which I have since, to my very great inconvenience, been obliged to go and carry myself. I could very ill spare the time, and you might have saved me the trouble, if you would only have been so good as to let us know you were going out. It would have made no difference to you, I suppose, whether you had walked in the shrubbery or gone to my house."

"Oh!"

"that was very kind of you, Sir Thomas; but you do not know how dry the path is to my house. Fanny would have had quite as good a walk there, I assure you, with the advantage of being of some use, and obliging her aunt: it is all her fault. If she would but have let us know she was going out but there is a something about Fanny, I have often observed it before— she likes to go her own way to work; she does not like to be dictated to; she takes her own independent walk whenever she can; she certainly has a little spirit of secrecy, and independence, and nonsense, about her, which I would advise her to get the better of."

she had done right:

her judgment had not misled her. For the purity of her intentions she could answer;

her uncle's displeasure was abating, and would abate farther as he considered the matter with more impartiality, and felt, as a good man must feel, how wretched, and how unpardonable, how hopeless, and how wicked it was to marry without affection.

When the meeting with which she was threatened for the morrow was past, she could not but flatter herself that the subject would be finally concluded, and Mr. Crawford once gone from Mansfield,

everything would soon be as if no such subject had existed. She would not, could not believe, that Mr. Crawford's affection for her could distress him long; his mind was not of that sort. London would soon bring its cure. In London he would soon learn to wonder at his infatuation, and be thankful for the right reason in her which had saved him from its evil consequences.

"Stay, stay, Fanny! what are you about? where are you going? don't be in such a hurry. Depend upon it, it is not you who are wanted; depend upon it, it is me"

"but you are so very eager to put yourself forward. What should Sir Thomas want you for? It is me, Baddeley, you mean; I am coming this moment. You mean me, Baddeley, I am sure; Sir Thomas wants me, not Miss Price."

how he could, after such language from her as she felt herself obliged to use, was not to be understood.

she did not love him, could not love him, was sure she never should love him;

such a change was quite impossible;

the subject was most painful to her;

she must entreat him never to mention it again, to allow her to leave him at once, and let it be considered as concluded for ever.

added, that

in her opinion their dispositions were so totally dissimilar as to make mutual affection incompatible; and that they were unfitted for each other by nature, education, and habit.

She must be courteous, and she must be compassionate.

a perseverance so selfish and ungenerous. Here was again a want of delicacy and regard for others which had formerly so struck and disgusted her. Here was again a something of the same Mr. Crawford whom she had so reprobated before. How evidently was there a gross want of feeling and humanity where his own pleasure was concerned; and alas! how always known no principle to supply as a duty what the heart was deficient in! Had her own affections been as free as perhaps they ought to have been, he never could have engaged them.

too great indulgence and luxury of a fire upstairs: