 and
frank, unstudied, but feeling and respectful manners, and such as confirmed him
his friend.
    It was long before Fanny could recover from the agitating happiness of such
an hour as was formed by the last thirty minutes of expectation and the first of
fruition; it was some time even before her happiness could be said to make her
happy, before the disappointment inseparable from the alteration of person had
vanished, and she could see in him the same William as before, and talk to him,
as her heart had been yearning to do, through many a past year. That time,
however, did gradually come, forwarded by an affection on his side as warm as
her own, and much less incumbered by refinement or self-distrust. She was the
first object of his love, but it was a love which his stronger spirits, and
bolder temper, made it as natural for him to express as to feel. On the morrow
they were walking about together with true enjoyment, and every succeeding
morrow renewed a tête-à-tête, which Sir Thomas could not but observe with
complacency, even before Edmund had pointed it out to him.
    Excepting the moments of peculiar delight, which any marked or unlooked-for
instance of Edmund's consideration of her in the last few months had excited,
Fanny had never known so much felicity in her life, as in this unchecked, equal,
fearless intercourse with the brother and friend, who was opening all his heart
to her, telling her all his hopes and fears, plans, and solicitudes respecting
that long thought of, dearly earned, and justly valued blessing of promotion -
who could give her direct and minute information of the father and mother,
brothers and sisters, of whom she very seldom heard - who was interested in all
the comforts and all the little hardships of her home, at Mansfield - ready to
think of every member of that home as she directed, or differing only by a less
scrupulous opinion, and more noisy abuse of their aunt Norris - and with whom
(perhaps the dearest indulgence of the whole) all the evil and good of their
earliest years could be gone over again, and every former united pain and
pleasure retraced with the fondest recollection. An advantage this, a
strengthener of love, in which even the conjugal tie is beneath the fraternal.
Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations
and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent
connections can supply; and it must be by a long and unnatural estrangement, by
a divorce which no
