that gives me an interest in what you
look and do, and excites my present curiosity. I will not leave you to wonder
long.«
    In spite of herself, she could not help half a smile, but she said nothing.
    »You shook your head at my acknowledging that I should not like to engage in
the duties of a clergyman always, for a constancy. Yes, that was the word.
Constancy, I am not afraid of the word. I would spell it, read it, write it with
any body. I see nothing alarming in the word. Did you think I ought?«
    »Perhaps, Sir,« said Fanny, wearied at last into speaking - »perhaps, Sir, I
thought it was a pity you did not always know yourself as well as you seemed to
do at that moment.«
    Crawford, delighted to get her to speak at any rate, was determined to keep
it up; and poor Fanny, who had hoped to silence him by such an extremity of
reproof, found herself sadly mistaken, and that it was only a change from one
object of curiosity and one set of words to another. He had always something to
intreat the explanation of. The opportunity was too fair. None such had occurred
since his seeing her in her uncle's room, none such might occur again before his
leaving Mansfield. Lady Bertram's being just on the other side of the table was
a trifle, for she might always be considered as only half awake, and Edmund's
advertisements were still of the first utility.
    »Well,« said Crawford, after a course of rapid questions and reluctant
answers - »I am happier than I was, because I now understand more clearly your
opinion of me. You think me unsteady - easily swayed by the whim of the moment -
easily tempted - easily put aside. With such an opinion, no wonder that - - But
we shall see. - It is not by protestations that I shall endeavour to convince
you I am wronged, it is not by telling you that my affections are steady. My
conduct shall speak for me - absence, distance, time shall speak for me. - They
shall prove, that as far as you can be deserved by any body, I do deserve you. -
You are infinitely my superior in merit; all that I know. - You have qualities
which I had not before supposed to exist in such a degree in any human creature.
You have some touches of the angel in you, beyond what - not merely beyond what
one sees,