Without attending to this, Henry Crawford continued his supplication.  “You must oblige us,” said he, “indeed you must.  When you have studied the character I am sure you will feel it suits you.  Tragedy may be your choice, but it will certainly appear that comedy chooses you.  You will have to visit me in prison with a basket of provisions; you will not refuse to visit me in prison?  I think I see you coming in with your basket.”

The influence of his voice was felt.  Julia wavered; but was he only trying to soothe and pacify her, and make her overlook the previous affront?  She distrusted him.  The slight had been most determined.  He was, perhaps, but at treacherous play with her.  She looked suspiciously at her sister; Maria’s countenance was to decide it; if she were vexed and alarmed—­but Maria looked all serenity and satisfaction, and Julia well knew that on this ground Maria could not be happy but at her expense.  With hasty indignation, therefore, and a tremulous voice, she said to him, “You do not seem afraid of not keeping your countenance when I come in with a basket of provisions—­though one might have supposed—­but it is only as Agatha that I was to be so overpowering!” She stopped, Henry Crawford looked rather foolish, and as if he did not know what to say.  Tom Bertram began again:—­

“Miss Crawford must be Amelia.  She will be an excellent Amelia.”

“Do not be afraid of my wanting the character,” cried Julia, with angry quickness:  “I am not to be Agatha, and I am sure I will do nothing else; and as to Amelia, it is of all parts in the world the most disgusting to me.  I quite detest her.  An odious little, pert, unnatural, impudent girl.  I have always protested against comedy, and this is comedy in its worst form.”  And so saying, she walked hastily out of the room, leaving awkward feelings to more than one, but exciting small compassion in any except Fanny, who had been a quiet auditor of the whole, and who could not think of her as under the agitations of jealousy without great pity....

The inattention of the two brothers and the aunt to Julia’s discomposure, and their blindness to its true cause, must be imputed to the fullness of their own minds.  They were totally preoccupied.  Tom was engrossed by the concerns of his theatre, and saw nothing that did not immediately relate to it.  Edmund, between his theatrical and his real part—­between Miss Crawford’s claims and his own conduct—­between love and consistency, was equally unobservant:  and Mrs. Norris was too busy in contriving and directing the general little matters of the company, superintending their various dresses with economical expedients, for which nobody thanked her, and saving, with delighted integrity, half-a-crown here and there to the absent Sir Thomas, to have leisure for watching the behavior, or guarding the happiness, of his daughters.

FRUITLESS REGRETS AND APPLES OF SODOM