Murder at Mansfield Park

"I see I have taken you by surprise," he said. "You will naturally wish for time to collect your thoughts. Allow me, in the mean time, to plead my case. It is, perhaps, not the most romantic language to use, but you are an intelligent woman, and I wish to appeal, principally, to that intelligence. I know you have an attachment to Mr Norris — " she coloured and started at this, but he continued, "I have no illusions, Miss Crawford. My affections are, I assure you, quite fervent enough to satisfy the vanity of a young woman of a far more trivial cast of mind than your own, but I have known for some time that I would have a pre-engaged heart to assail. I know, likewise, that you will now be a woman of no inconsiderable fortune. But what can Mr Norris do for you — what can even your brother do — compared to what I shall do? I am not the master of Lessingby, but I am, nonetheless, a man of no inconsiderable property. If such things are important to you, you may have what house you choose, and have it completely new furnished from cellar to attic, and dictate your own terms as to pin-money, jewels, carriages, and the rest. But I suspect such things are not important to you. My offer to you is independence. Heroism, danger, activity, adventure. The chance to travel — to see the world. All the things that men take for granted, and most women do not even have the imagination to dream of, far less embrace. But you, I fancy, are an exception. What would be tranquillity and comfort to little Maria Bertram, would be tediousness and vexation to you. You are not born to sit still and do nothing. Even if he makes a complete recovery, which is by no means certain, you are no more fitted to be Edmund Norris’s sweet little wife than I would be. And if he does not recover, you will waste your youth and beauty pushing an invalid in a bath chair, buried in a suffocating domesticity. Do not make the mistake of marrying a man whose understanding is inferior to your own — do not hide your light under a bushel, purely to do him credit. You are worth more than that — you can achieve more than that. I know enough of you already to be quite sure that you would be an inestimable support to me in my profession — and not merely a support, but a partner, in the truest, fullest sense of the word. Your eye for detail, your capacity for logical thinking and lucid deduction, surpass anything I have seen, even among men whom I admire. You have a genius for the business, Mary, and if you do not choose it, it seems that it chooses you."

She drew back in confusion, aware that she ought to be displeased at the freedom of his address, but he had already taken her hand — not with lover-like impetuosity, but with cool deliberation; he lifted her fingers slowly to his lips, his eyes on hers in a gaze of passionate intensity. Something passed between them, that Mary felt all over her, in all her pulses, and all her nerves. Denial was impossible; there was a connection between this man and herself; an attraction that she had long been blind to, and even longer denied.

Such reflections were sufficient to bring a colour to her pale cheeks; a colour that Maddox saw, and seized upon. But he knew better than to press her.

"I am very sensible of the honour you are paying me, Mr Maddox," she began, dropping her eyes.

"But?"

"But I will need some time to consider it."

"Of course," he said, getting to his feet, and preparing to go. "Pray take all the time you need. My own affections are fixed, and will not change. I love you, Mary Crawford, and I give you my word, that in marrying me, you will lose nothing you value that is associated with that name, and you will gain a freedom that only Mary Maddox could dream of attaining."