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.