Mansfield Park Revisited by Joan Aiken

Fanny’s correspondent, Mary Crawford, who seemed basing her every hope and prospect of recovery from illness on the memory of a few summer months passed at Mansfield, during a life otherwise wasted in trifling, unprofitable, perhaps actively harmful occupations.
    â€”Susan was much tempted to divulge the contents of Miss Crawford’s letter to Mrs. Osborne, and beg her advice; already she found herself very ready to depend on the judicious, upright sense and quick understanding of this new friend; but a moment’s consideration showed her that it would not do; she had no right to be disclosing Miss Crawford’s plight to an outsider. She must make up her mind for herself as to the best course to follow.
    Mrs. Osborne extracted her brother from the billiard-room, where the two men were not found to be playing billiards, quite a brief game having proved sufficient for Mr. Wadham’s strength; they had been looking at maps and discussing ancient history, for Mr. Wadham, it seemed, was a scholar, a Latinist, with a decided bent for the pursuit and investigation of antiquities, and he had been quizzing Tom as to the likelihood of Roman remains being discovered on the Mansfield acres.
    â€œI have been telling your cousin, Miss Price.’ he cried eagerly, “that it is entirely probable that the great thoroughfare of Watling Street passed across his property—going from Ratae, which was Leicester, you know, to Verulameum—which of course was St. Albans. There is a very good chance that if we were to try an excavation here —” pointing to the estate map, “or here, we might come across the remains of a Roman posting station, or villa.”
    Tom, Susan could see, was quite charmed with the notion that his land might yield such an interesting discovery, and the two men were very well pleased with one another.—They bade each other a cordial farewell, and the parsonage pair walked off across the park.

Chapter 4
    Some hours of reflection must pass before Susan found herself equal to the task of answering Mary Crawford’s letter. Among the difficulties to be faced was the fact that although Miss Crawford, or Lady Ormiston, was probably not even aware that such a person as Susan Price even existed in the world, yet she, Susan Price, possessed a quite deep and extensive knowledge as to the history of Mary Crawford.
    How many times, when the two sisters were sitting sewing together in the drawing-room at Mansfield, or picking roses in the garden, or taking Pug for an airing in the shrubberies, had Fanny not described those old days to Susan, telling the story of the summer when the Crawfords came to Mansfield Parsonage; of how—charming, good-natured, gifted as they were—yet they had contrived to wreak havoc, and quite cut up the peace of the family at the great house.
    Henry and Mary Crawford had been brother and sister to Mrs. Grant, wife to the incumbent at that time occupying the Parsonage. Talented, lively, and attractive, they had been, ready to please and be pleased; accustomed to polished London society, yet by no means despising the pleasures of rural quietude. Yet their charm, based on mere easy good-nature, had concealed both calculating ambition and callous vanity. Their natures, fundamentally shallow, had been spoilt by the bad influence of an uncle who had brought them up, a man of gross ways and scandalous connections. Miss Crawford, with twenty thousand pounds of her own, had her heart set on a rich marriage; her brother Henry, endowed with a handsome competence, led the life of a man-about-town and was a selfish, thoughtless, flirt; untouched by any affection himself (save for his sister) he delighted to make young ladies fall in love with him, and, in this aim, his smiles, his lively conversation, and his caressing ways were universally successful. Maria and Julia, the two Bertram sisters, had both succumbed to his addresses, and both had, later, flung