“BUT why should Mrs. Grant ask Fanny?” said Lady Bertram. “How came she to think of asking Fanny?—Fanny never dines there, you know, in this sort of way. I cannot spare her, and I am sure she does not want to go.—Fanny, you do not want to go, do you?”

“If you put such a question to her,” cried Edmund, preventing his cousin's speaking, “Fanny will immediately say, no; but I am sure, my dear mother, she would like to go; and I can see no reason why she should not.”

“I cannot imagine why Mrs. Grant should think of asking her.—She never did before.—She used to ask your sisters now and then, but she never asked Fanny.”

“If you cannot do without me, ma’am,” said Fanny, in a self-denying tone—

“But my mother will have my father with her all the evening.”

“To be sure, so I shall.”

“Suppose you take my father's opinion, ma’am.”

“That's well thought of. So I will, Edmund. I will ask Sir Thomas, as soon as he comes in, whether I can do without her.”

“As you please, ma’am, on that head; but I meant my father's opinion as to the propriety of the invitation's being accepted or not; and I think he will consider it a right thing by Mrs. Grant, as well as by Fanny, that being the first invitation it should be accepted.”

“I do not know.We will ask him. But he will be very much surprized that Mrs. Grant should ask Fanny at all.”

There was nothing more to be said, or that could be said to any purpose, till Sir Thomas were present; but the subject involving, as it did, her own evening's comfort for the morrow, was so much uppermost in Lady Bertram's mind, that half an hour afterwards, on his looking in for a minute in his way from his plantation to his dressing-room, she called him back again, when he had almost closed the door, with “Sir Thomas, stop a moment—I have something to say to you.”