r 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 had a good estate in Norfolk, the
daughter twenty thousand pounds. As children, their sister had been
always very fond of them; but, as her own marriage had been soon
followed by the death of their common parent, which left them to the
care of a brother of their father, of whom Mrs. Grant knew nothing, she
had scarcely seen them since. In their uncle's house they had found a
kind home. Admiral and Mrs. Crawford, though agreeing in nothing else,
were united in affection for these children, or, at least, were no
farther adverse in their feelings than that each had their favourite, to
whom they showed the greatest fondness of the two. The Admiral delighted
in the boy, Mrs. Crawford doted on the girl; and it was the lady's death
which now obliged her _protegee_, after some months' further trial at
her uncle's house, to find another home. Admiral Crawford was a man of
vicious conduct, who chose, instead of retaining his niece, to bring his
mistress under his own roof; and to this Mrs. Grant was indebted for her
sister's proposal of coming to her, a measure quite as welcome on one
side as it could be expedient on the other; for Mrs. Grant, having by
this time run through the usual resources of ladies residing in the
country without a family of children--having more than filled her
favourite sitting-room with pretty furniture, and made a choice
collection of plants and poultry--was very much in want of some variety
at home. The arrival, therefore, of a sister whom she had always loved,
and now hoped to retain with her as long as she remained single, was
highly agreeable; and her chief anxiety was lest Mansfield should not
satisfy the habits of a young woman who had been mostly used to London.

Miss Crawford was not entirely free from similar apprehensions, though
they arose principally from doubts of her sister's style of living and
tone of society; and it was not till after she had tried in vain to
persuade her brother to settle with her at his own country house,
that she could resolve to hazard herself among her other relations. To
anything like a permanence of abode, or limitation of society, Henry
Crawford had, unluckily, a great dislike: he could not accommodate his
sister in an article of such importance; but he escorted her, with the
utmost kindness, into Northamptonshire, and a