and talked to Lady
Bertram, listened to her and read to her with never a thought of envying
her cousins their gaieties. About this time Maria, who was now in her
twenty-first year, got engaged to a rich but heavy country gentleman
called Rushworth, merely because he had an income larger than her
father's and could give her a house in town; while Tom returned safely
from the West Indies, bringing an excellent account of his father's
health, but telling the family that Sir Thomas would be detained in
Antigua for several months longer.

Such was the state of affairs in the month of July; and Fanny had just
reached her eighteenth year when the society of the village received an
addition in the brother and sister of Mrs. Grant, a Mr. and Miss
Crawford, the children of her mother by a second marriage. They were
young people of fortune, the son having a good estate in Norfolk, the
daughter twenty thousand pounds. They had been brought up by their
father's brother and his wife, Admiral and Mrs. Crawford; and it was
Mrs. Crawford's death, and the consequent installation of the admiral's
mistress in the house, that had forced them to find another home. Mary
Crawford was remarkably pretty; Henry, though not handsome, had air and
countenance; the manners of both were lively and pleasant; and Mrs.
Grant gave them credit for everything else.

The young people were pleased with each other from the first. Miss
Crawford was most allowably a sweet, pretty girl, while the Miss
Bertrams were the finest young women in the country. Mr. Crawford was
the most agreeable young man Julia and Maria had ever known. Before he
had been at Mansfield a week the former lady was quite ready to be
fallen in love with; while as for the latter she did not want to see or
to understand. "There could be no harm in her liking an agreeable
man--everybody knew her situation--Mr. Crawford must take care of
himself."

A young woman, pretty, lively, witty, playing on a harp as elegant as
herself, was enough to catch any man's heart. 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 with
Mary Crawford; 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. He taught her to ride on a horse which he had