del1952filan

@@@@@You must be sorry for your own indifference ?We are so totally unlike,? said Fanny, avoiding a direct answer, ?we are so very, very different in all our inclinations and ways, that I consider it as quite impossible we should ever be tolerably happy together, even if I could like himThere never were two people more dissimilarWe have not one taste in commonWe should be miserable ?You are mistaken, FannyThe dissimilarity is not so strongYou are quite enough alikeYou have tastes in commonYou have moral and literary tastes in commonYou have both warm hearts and benevolent feelings; and, Fanny, who that heard him read, and saw you listen to Shakespeare the other night, will think you unfitted as companions? You forget yourself: there is a decided difference in your tempers, I allowHe is lively, you are serious; but so much the better: his spirits will support yoursIt is your disposition to be easily dejected and to fancy difficulties greater than they areHis cheerfulness will counteract thisHe sees difficulties nowhere: and his pleasantness and gaiety will be a constant support to youYour being so far unlike, Fanny, does not in the smallest degree make against the probability of your happiness together: do not imagine itI am myself convinced that it is rather a favourable circumstance I am perfectly persuaded that the tempers had better be unlike: I mean unlike in the flow of the spirits, in the manners, in the inclination for much or little company, in the propensity to talk or to be silent, to be grave or to be gaySome opposition here is, I am thoroughly convinced, friendly to matrimonial happinessI exclude extremes, of course; and a very close resemblance in all those points would be the likeliest way to produce an extremeA counteraction, gentle and continual, is the best safeguard of manners and conduct Full well could Fanny guess where his thoughts were now: Miss Crawford?s power was all returningHe had been speaking of her cheerfully from the hour of his coming homeHis avoiding her was quite at an endHe had dined at the Parsonage only the preceding