ere weaker than those he had cherished when he had left Mansfield,
and that he was more satisfied with all that he saw and heard of Harry
Crawford.

"I cannot give her up, Fanny," Edmund wrote of Mary. "She is the only
woman in the world whom I could ever think of as a wife." Mary, on her
part, hearing of a serious illness which had prostrated Tom Bertram,
could not forbear saying to the same correspondent: "Poor young man! If
he is to die, there will be two poor young men less in the world. I put
it to your conscience whether 'Sir' Edmund would not do more good with
all the Bertram property than any other possible 'sir.'" She also told
Fanny that Mrs. Rushworth, in the absence of her husband on a visit to
his mother at Bath, had been spending the Easter with some friends at
Twickenham, and that her brother Harry had also been passing a few days
at Richmond.

The interval of a few days afforded a commentary on this last piece of
news. It turned out that Mrs. Rushworth, having succumbed once more to
the protestations of Harry Crawford, had left her house in Wimpole
Street to live with him, and that her sister Julia had eloped to
Scotland to be married to Mr. Yates. On the occurrence of this
distressing news, Fanny was summoned back to Mansfield Park, and was
escorted down there by Edmund, who described to her his final interview
with Mary. It seemed that Mary's distress at her brother's folly was so
much more keenly expressed than any sorrow for his sin that Edmund's
conscience left him no alternative but to make an end of their
acquaintance.

Indeed, before many weeks had passed, he ceased to care about Miss
Crawford, and became as anxious to marry Fanny as Fanny herself could
desire; and before many months had gone, the cousins were united. Nor
was this the only happy event that occurred at Mansfield. Harry Crawford
and Mrs. Rushworth having quarrelled and parted, and Sir Thomas having
refused to allow his elder daughter to come home, Mrs. Norris cast off
the dust of Mansfield from her feet, and went to live with her niece in
an establishment arranged for them in another county. While as for Tom,
he gradually regained his health, without regaining the thoughtlessness
and selfishness of his previous habits, and was, in fact, improved
forever by his illness.

* * * * *

Emma

"Emma," one of the author's later novels, had been finished,
when, in the autumn of 1815, Ja