Fanny would rather have had Edmund tell the story, but his determined silence obliged her to relate her brother's situation: her voice was animated in speaking of his profession, and the foreign stations he had been on; but she could not mention the number of years that he had been absent without tears in her eyes. 
Fanny would rather have had Edmund tell the story, but his determined silence obliged her to relate her brother's situation: her voice was animated, but she could not mention the number of years that he had been absent without tears in her eyes. 