dow;
and as it advanced, she had the mortification of seeing him advance too,
moving forward by gentle degrees towards the instrument, and when it
ceased, he was close by the singers, among the most urgent in requesting
to hear the glee again.

Fanny sighed alone at the window till scolded away by Mrs. Norris's
threats of catching cold.

CHAPTER XII

Sir Thomas was to return in November, and his eldest son had duties to
call him earlier home. The approach of September brought tidings of Mr.
Bertram, first in a letter to the gamekeeper and then in a letter
to Edmund; and by the end of August he arrived himself, to be gay,
agreeable, and gallant again as occasion served, or Miss Crawford
demanded; to tell of races and Weymouth, and parties and friends, to
which she might have listened six weeks before with some interest, and
altogether to give her the fullest conviction, by the power of actual
comparison, of her preferring his younger brother.

It was very vexatious, and she was heartily sorry for it; but so it was;
and so far from now meaning to marry the elder, she did not even want
to attract him beyond what the simplest claims of conscious beauty
required: his lengthened absence from Mansfield, without anything but
pleasure in view, and his own will to consult, made it perfectly clear
that he did not care about her; and his indifference was so much more
than equalled by her own, that were he now to step forth the owner of
Mansfield Park, the Sir Thomas complete, which he was to be in time, she
did not believe she could accept him.

The season and duties which brought Mr. Bertram back to Mansfield took
Mr. Crawford into Norfolk. Everingham could not do without him in the
beginning of September. He went for a fortnight--a fortnight of such
dullness to the Miss Bertrams as ought to have put them both on their
guard, and made even Julia admit, in her jealousy of her sister, the
absolute necessity of distrusting his attentions, and wishing him not
to return; and a fortnight of sufficient leisure, in the intervals of
shooting and sleeping, to have convinced the gentleman that he ought
to keep longer away, had he been more in the habit of examining his own
motives, and of reflecting to what the indulgence of his idle vanity was
tending; but, thoughtless and selfish from prosperity and bad example,
he would not look beyond the present moment. The sisters, handsome,
clever, and encouraging, were an amusement to his s