Page:Austen - Mansfield Park, vol. III, 1814.djvu/79

 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 semedseemed [sic] 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