 and a listener who
seemed so much obliged, so full of wonder at the performance, and who shewed
herself not wanting in taste. She played till Fanny's eyes, straying to the
window on the weather's being evidently fair, spoke what she felt must be done.
    »Another quarter of an hour,« said Miss Crawford, »and we shall see how it
will be. Do not run away the first moment of its holding up. Those clouds look
alarming.«
    »But they are passed over,« said Fanny. - »I have been watching them. - This
weather is all from the south.«
    »South or north, I know a black cloud when I see it; and you must not set
forward while it is so threatening. And besides, I want to play something more
to you - a very pretty piece - and your cousin Edmund's prime favourite. You
must stay and hear your cousin's favourite.«
    Fanny felt that she must; and though she had not waited for that sentence to
be thinking of Edmund, such a memento made her particularly awake to his idea,
and she fancied him sitting in that room again and again, perhaps in the very
spot where she sat now, listening with constant delight to the favourite air,
played, as it appeared to her, with superior tone and expression; and though
pleased with it herself, and glad to like whatever was liked by him, she was
more sincerely impatient to go away at the conclusion of it than she had been
before; and on this being evident, she was so kindly asked to call again, to
take them in her walk whenever she could, to come and hear more of the harp,
that she felt it necessary to be done, if no objection arose at home.
    Such was the origin of the sort of intimacy which took place between them
within the first fortnight after the Miss Bertrams' going away, an intimacy
resulting principally from Miss Crawford's desire of something new, and which
had little reality in Fanny's feelings. Fanny went to her every two or three
days; it seemed a kind of fascination; she could not be easy without going, and
yet it was without loving her, without ever thinking like her, without any sense
of obligation for being sought after now when nobody else was to be had; and
deriving no higher pleasure from her conversation than occasional amusement, and
that often at the expense of her judgment, when it was raised by pleasantry on
people or subjects which she wished to be respected. She
