She had reason to suppose herself not yet forgotten by Mr. Crawford.
She had heard repeatedly from his sister within the three weeks which
had passed since their leaving Mansfield, and in each letter there had
been a few lines from himself, warm and determined like his speeches.
It was a correspondence which Fanny found quite as unpleasant as she
had feared. Miss Crawford's style of writing, lively and affectionate,
was itself an evil, independent of what she was thus forced into
reading from the brother's pen, for Edmund would never rest till she
had read the chief of the letter to him; and then she had to listen to
his admiration of her language, and the warmth of her attachments.
There had, in fact, been so much of message, of allusion, of
recollection, so much of Mansfield in every letter, that Fanny could
not but suppose it meant for him to hear; and to find herself forced
into a purpose of that kind, compelled into a correspondence which was
bringing her the addresses of the man she did not love, and obliging
her to administer to the adverse passion of the man she did, was
cruelly mortifying. Here, too, her present removal promised advantage.
When no longer under the same roof with Edmund, she trusted that Miss
Crawford would have no motive for writing strong enough to overcome the
trouble, and that at Portsmouth their correspondence would dwindle into
nothing.