The stiffness of the meeting soon gave way before their popular manners and more diffused intimacies: little groups were formed, and everybody grew comfortable.

Fanny felt the advantage; and, drawing back from the toils of civility, would have been again most happy, could she have kept her eyes from wandering between Edmund and Mary Crawford.

_She_ looked all loveliness--and what might not be the end of it?
Her own musings were brought to an end on perceiving Mr.Crawford before her, and her thoughts were put into another channel by his engaging her almost instantly for the first two dances.

Her happiness on this occasion was very much _a_ _la_ _mortal_, finely chequered.

To be secure of a partner at first was a most essential good--for the moment of beginning was now growing seriously near; and she so little understood her own claims as to think that if Mr.Crawford had not asked her, she must have been the last to be sought after, and should have received a partner only through a series of inquiry, and bustle, and interference, which would have been terrible; but at the same time there was a pointedness in his manner of asking her which she did not like, and she saw his eye glancing for a moment at her necklace, with a smile--she thought there was a smile--which made her blush and feel wretched.