to estimate, or put Edmund
Bertram sufficiently out of her head.
    Edmund had greatly the advantage of her in this respect. He had not to wait
and wish with vacant affections for an object worthy to succeed her in them.
Scarcely had he done regretting Mary Crawford, and observing to Fanny how
impossible it was that he should ever meet with such another woman, before it
began to strike him whether a very different kind of woman might not do just as
well - or a great deal better; whether Fanny herself were not growing as dear,
as important to him in all her smiles, and all her ways, as Mary Crawford had
ever been; and whether it might not be a possible, an hopeful undertaking to
persuade her that her warm and sisterly regard for him would be foundation
enough for wedded love.
    I purposely abstain from dates on this occasion, that every one may be at
liberty to fix their own, aware that the cure of unconquerable passions, and the
transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary much as to time in different
people. - I only intreat every body to believe that exactly at the time when it
was quite natural that it should be so, and not a week earlier, Edmund did cease
to care about Miss Crawford, and became as anxious to marry Fanny, as Fanny
herself could desire.
    With such a regard for her, indeed, as his had long been, a regard founded
on the most endearing claims of innocence and helplessness, and completed by
every recommendation of growing worth, what could be more natural than the
change? Loving, guiding, protecting her, as he had been doing ever since her
being ten years old, her mind in so great a degree formed by his care, and her
comfort depending on his kindness, an object to him of such close and peculiar
interest, dearer by all his own importance with her than any one else at
Mansfield, what was there now to add, but that he should learn to prefer soft
light eyes to sparkling dark ones. - And being always with her, and always
talking confidentially, and his feelings exactly in that favourable state which
a recent disappointment gives, those soft light eyes could not be very long in
obtaining the pre-eminence.
    Having once set out, and felt that he had done so, on this road to
happiness, there was nothing on the side of prudence to stop him or make his
progress slow; no doubts of her deserving, no fears from opposition of taste, no
need of drawing new hopes of happiness from dissimilarity of temper. Her mind,
disposition, opinions