Chapter 32 (inverted V) There it is...

Having had a conversation with Mary the day before, Fanny was much calmer when she encountered Mr. Crawford again the next day as the Price family was preparing to go to church.

Mary walked happily down the street, hand in hand with her sister. Every Sunday brought her joy, not because of her devout faith, but because the Price couple never required her to worry about anything on this day. Anyone who saw the family out together would marvel at how beautiful they were, even Mr. Price always kept himself impeccably groomed.

After church, the weather was perfect, sunny and bright. Mrs. Price, as usual, went for a walk on the dike and chatted with her friends. Mary strolled along the dike, admiring the view in the distance. From here, one could see the sailing ships of Spithead and the distant islands. The sunlight made everything even more magnificent. The sound of the waves crashing against the shore and the cries of seagulls mingled together, as if nature were playing a symphony for them. Before the Industrial Revolution, such beautiful scenery was commonplace. In a few decades, this port would be completely different.

The sea breeze ruffled Mary's skirt, and her golden hair, not completely concealed by her light blue Bonnet hat, shimmered in the sunlight. As she strolled along, admiring the scenery, Mr. Crawford suddenly took her arm with one hand and Fanny's with the other, leaving Susan behind.

Mary was a little uncomfortable being held by a strange man. She tried to pull her arm away from Mr. Crawford's grasp but failed. The man glanced at her with a smile and continued chatting with Fanny.

They chatted about when Fanny would return to Mansfield, and Mr. Crawford seized the opportunity to express his concern, saying that "with just a little hint from Fanny," he and his sister could send her back to Mansfield at any time. As he said this, he glanced at Fanny, who looked a little tired, and thought that Sir Thomas really should consider the health of his nieces and bring them to a better environment.

This suggestion made Mary even more impatient. The Price family's situation had improved a lot thanks to her efforts. If they were really as delicate as this gentleman implied, they would have died long ago and wouldn't have had anyone to save them.

She didn't say a word to the man the entire time, until they arrived at their doorstep. Mr. Crawford, unsure whether the Price family's food would satisfy his palate, finally excused himself. Mary went inside first, thinking to herself as she went in: This man talks too much. If he had said just a few less words, he would have been more charming and exposed fewer problems.

Dinner at the Price family wasn't as bad as Mr. Crawford had imagined, and Mary and Fanny were both glad they didn't have to deal with such a man anymore. People like Mr. Crawford often reveal their flaws the more you get to know them; Mary's impression of him was actually worse than when they first met yesterday. Fortunately, he didn't come back.

About two days later, Fanny and Mary both received letters from London, but their feelings after reading them were quite different. Some of the things Miss Crawford said in her letter made Fanny uncomfortable, while Mary was overjoyed. Her letter to *Ladies' Magazine* had been accepted, and the joy of publication left her no time to carefully read what her sister's "friend" had actually said in the letter.

The editors of *Ladies' Magazine* greatly admired Mary's witty and humorous writing style and looked forward to her writing more articles on how to dress and style herself. The only downside was that the magazine's payment wasn't as much as Mary had hoped. At that time, the "knowledge tax" hadn't been completely abolished, and commercial magazines generally had small print runs, so the payments were naturally very meager.

Fortunately, Mary had always been in the mindset of making use of waste materials; something was better than nothing, and she didn't care that the manuscript fee was far less than what she could earn by selling an ordinary hat. Sitting in her room, she quickly wrote another piece, this time including not only hats but also many illustrations of high-waisted skirts in fashion, praising this light and romantic neoclassical style.

After sending out this manuscript, Mary asked Susan to place a copy of "Ladies' Magazine" in Taylor's tailor shop: now that the legendary designer had become a contributor to the magazine, those novel hats were all the rage in London, and perhaps the ladies of Portsmouth would be willing to pay for London fashion... She hoped that this would boost their hat sales.

Encouraged by her sister's vision of the future, Susan excitedly sent the magazine over, urging Aunt Taylor to make a batch of hats based on the designs in the pictures. Meanwhile, Mary and Susan were busy again, completely unaware of Fanny's agonizing struggle in the throes of her emotional turmoil.

By the time her cousin Edmund's letter finally arrived at the Price family's house, Fanny had been living in Portsmouth for seven weeks. Although she was quite comfortable there, she was constantly thinking about the people in Mansfield.

This letter dealt Fanny an even greater blow. Her uncle, Sir Thomas, wouldn't be able to pick her up until after Easter, and the thing she cared about most (referring to Edmund and Miss Crawford's affair) seemed hopeless. However, Edmund's tender affection for another woman who was completely unworthy in the letter made her even a little resentful. She repeatedly chewed over Edmund's words in the letter and repeatedly defended her cousin in her heart. For several days, she had no heart to talk to her two sisters.

Mary and Susan didn't want anyone to disturb their business, and this state of mutual non-interference was broken a few days later by a letter from Mrs. Bertram.

Their eldest cousin, Tom, fell off his horse and didn't get immediate medical attention; now he's seriously ill and has a high fever!

As Mrs. Bertram sent her lengthy letters from Mansfield, the Price sisters were able to keep abreast of their eldest cousin's latest developments.

However, in no way should this news cause concern for the rest of the Price family besides Fanny. Mary and Susan were merely comforting Fanny out of love for her. The Price family didn't even know Tom Bertram, and even if he were dead now, Mrs. Price would only offer a quiet sigh of sympathy for her sister.

Even Mary genuinely felt that her cousin's current predicament was inevitable. Given his lifelong habit of neglecting his health and indulging in pleasure, even if he hadn't fallen off his horse this time, he might have done something even worse next time. He hadn't done anything beneficial to the country or his family while he was alive, so there was nothing to sympathize with in his death.

The Easter holidays were over, and her older cousin hadn't fully recovered. No one had offered to take Fanny back home, and Mary and Susan could sense her anxiety. She kept talking to her two sisters about the beautiful scenery of the countryside: from the rosebuds and camellias in her aunt's garden to the lush, verdant vegetation of her uncle's plantation... In the city, none of this beauty was there. The air in Portsmouth smelled unpleasant, and the only way to decorate Price's small house was with a few wildflowers that Mary and Susan picked from the roadside.

These descriptions made Susan yearn for Mansfield. She also disliked the noisy environment of the city, and naturally had a lot in common with her other sister, Fanny. Mary, on the other hand, adapted quite well. Portsmouth's small population was hardly a problem for her. Apart from the extremely unsatisfactory sanitation (which she felt she would never be satisfied with anywhere, perhaps the countryside was better, but not by much), everything in this era had a classical beauty and a unique charm in her eyes.

Miss Crawford of London was the happiest of them all, as if God himself had arranged for her and Edmund to be together. This indescribable joy could be glimpsed in her letters to Fanny.

Mary couldn't help but think: for Fanny's sake, it would be better if her older cousin were still alive, so that he wouldn't satisfy the desires of another Miss Mary and let her have her way; however, such a love that requires the withdrawal of another person to be fulfilled is rather meaningless.

Miss Crawford offered to pick her up and take her back in her letter, but Fanny was naturally unwilling to return to Mansfield indebted to such two people.

Mary knew that Mr. Crawford's true colors were about to be fully exposed, so she didn't try to persuade Fanny at all: expecting a playboy to remain devoted to a woman was the most ridiculous thing in the world, and she didn't want Fanny to be deceived after marriage; she didn't even think of reminding Sir Thomas through Fanny that Mrs. Rushworth's marriage was almost destined to have problems from the moment it was concluded, and she was too weak to do anything about it.

The brother's nature is hard to change, and he deserves no sympathy no matter what fate befalls him. Mary, on the other hand, sees the sister's situation as more understandable. A young woman with a dowry of £20,000, accustomed to the pleasures of the world, would hardly be expected to sacrifice her London life for a baron's second son with no inheritance rights, and live in a country clergyman's house. It's highly unlikely she wasn't blinded by love!

From this young lady's perspective, it didn't seem so wrong of her to secretly hope that Tom Bertram would simply die. This was Mary's thought when Fanny asked her for her opinion on Miss Crawford's behavior.

Mary knew how much Edmund meant to Fanny, so of course she wouldn't say that to her sister. She simply emphasized, "If Miss Crawford needs money to strengthen her resolve in love, I'm afraid she'll be disappointed. Cousin Edmund certainly wants Cousin Tom to get better from the bottom of his heart."

In fact, Fanny would be able to go back soon, because something even worse and more terrible than Tom's illness had happened.

When Fanny received Miss Crawford's urgent letter again, she was still a little puzzled. She knew in her heart that it must be related to Mr. Crawford's behavior with her cousin Maria in London, but she couldn't figure out just how outrageous Mr. Crawford had gone, to the point that even his sister had noticed and wanted to write a letter specifically asking her to keep it a secret. In fact, Miss Crawford didn't need to worry at all. Fanny had never revealed this matter to anyone from beginning to end. Even Mary only knew why she rejected Mr. Crawford because of the original book.

The very next day, as she anxiously awaited a letter from Mary in London, her sister Mary entered the living room with Mr. Price's newspaper and told her some shocking news.