rite, write. Finish it at once. Let there be an end of this
suspense. Fix, commit, condemn yourself."

Such sensations, however, were too near akin to resentment to be long
guiding Fanny's soliloquies. She was soon more softened and sorrowful.
His warm regard, his kind expressions, his confidential treatment,
touched her strongly. He was only too good to everybody. It was a
letter, in short, which she would not but have had for the world, and
which could never be valued enough. This was the end of it.

Everybody at all addicted to letter-writing, without having much to say,
which will include a large proportion of the female world at least, must
feel with Lady Bertram that she was out of luck in having such a capital
piece of Mansfield news as the certainty of the Grants going to Bath,
occur at a time when she could make no advantage of it, and will admit
that it must have been very mortifying to her to see it fall to the
share of her thankless son, and treated as concisely as possible at the
end of a long letter, instead of having it to spread over the largest
part of a page of her own. For though Lady Bertram rather shone in the
epistolary line, having early in her marriage, from the want of other
employment, and the circumstance of Sir Thomas's being in Parliament,
got into the way of making and keeping correspondents, and formed for
herself a very creditable, common-place, amplifying style, so that a
very little matter was enough for her: she could not do entirely without
any; she must have something to write about, even to her niece; and
being so soon to lose all the benefit of Dr. Grant's gouty symptoms and
Mrs. Grant's morning calls, it was very hard upon her to be deprived of
one of the last epistolary uses she could put them to.

There was a rich amends, however, preparing for her. Lady Bertram's
hour of good luck came. Within a few days from the receipt of Edmund's
letter, Fanny had one from her aunt, beginning thus--

"My Dear Fanny,--I take up my pen to communicate some very alarming
intelligence, which I make no doubt will give you much concern".

This was a great deal better than to have to take up the pen to acquaint
her with all the particulars of the Grants' intended journey, for the
present intelligence was of a nature to promise occupation for the pen
for many days to come, being no less than the dangerous illness of her
eldest son, of which they had received notice by express a few hours
before.