 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 every body. - 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.
    Every body 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- 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.
    Tom had gone from London with a
