Page:Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889).djvu/135

 having already given her heart elsewhere. Crawford's pursuit is resolute; he even follows her to Portsmouth, where she has gone for a visit to her own family, and puts up with vulgarity and discomfort there for the sake of showing her how much he is in earnest; but after that he is obliged to go to London for a time, and his visit there effects Fanny's deliverance from a most unwelcome suitor.

It is easy to see from what has been already quoted that any intercourse between Maria Rushworth and Henry Crawford would be very dangerous for both, and it is almost impossible for them not to come across each other in London society. When they first meet, Mrs. Rushworth treats her former admirer with repellent coldness, and this instantly wakens his vanity. He determines to soften her into greater kindness, and succeeds only too well, for he has never had any idea how strong her feeling for him had been; and when once it is roused again, she is quite incapable of controlling it. Matters are so evident, that an old friend writes to warn Sir Thomas, who sets off at once for London, but arrives too late; Maria has already left her husband's house with Mr. Crawford, and Julia puts the climax to her father's distress by eloping at the same time with an acquaintance of Tom Bertram, the Mr. Yates who figured so conspicuously in the theatricals.

The first impulse of the whole Bertram family is to turn to Fanny, who is still at Portsmouth, for comfort and sympathy; and she hurries back to Mansfield Park to help and support them through all the days of misery that follow, while Sir Thomas and Edmund are vainly endeavouring to trace and bring back Maria. Tom Bertram is dangerously ill, and there