In _Mansfield Park_ and in _Persuasion_, there is another variety of the old story. Fanny Price and Anne Elliot, the one the daughter of a poor lieutenant of marines, whose family is the most ill-bred in all Miss Austen's books, the other the neglected daughter of Sir Walter Elliot, Baronet, have more in common than any other of her heroines. Although these stories are different, yet in each it is the devotion of the heroine that guides the course of love through many obstacles into a quiet haven. Who that reads their story will say that Miss Austen's maidens are without passion? They do not analyse their feelings, nor do they pour them forth in wild soliloquy. But the heart of each is clearly revealed through little acts and expressions. Fanny Price, cherishing a love for Edmund Bertram, who was kind to her when she was neglected by everybody else, refuses to marry the rich, handsome, and brilliant Mr. Crawford, although she herself is penniless. We feel her misery as she realises that she is nothing but a friend to Edmund and rejoice with her when her love awakens a response. Anne Elliot, the gentlest of all her heroines, who in obedience to her father has broken her engagement to Captain Wentworth eight years before, when she is again thrown into his company, observes his every expression, and grows sad and weak in health at his studied neglect. Other heroines have said more, but none have felt more than Miss Austen's. Anne Elliot herself has spoken for them: "All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one) is that of loving longest, when existence, or when hope, is gone." But Jane Austen, like Shakespeare, is a dramatist. So, lest this be taken for Miss Austen's opinion, Captain Wentworth has the last word here when he writes to Anne, "Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. Unjust I have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant." And so, at the close of these novels, two more happy homes are added to those of rural England.