 Volume 3. CHAPTER XI. of Emma by Jane Austen. Read for LibreVox.org into the public domain. Harriet. Poor Harriet. Those were the words, in them lay the tormenting ideas which Emma could not get rid of, and which constituted the real misery of the business to her. Frank Churchill had behaved very ill by herself, very ill in many ways, but it was not so much his behaviour as her own, which made her so angry with him. It was the scrape which she had drawn her into on Harriet's account that gave the deepest hue to his offence. Poor Harriet, to be a second time the dupe of her misconceptions and flattery. Mr. Knightley had spoken prophetically when he once said, Emma, you have been no friend to Harriet Smith. She was afraid she had done her nothing but to service. It was true that she had not to charge herself, in this instance as in the former, with being the sole and original author of the mischief, with having suggested such feelings as might otherwise never have entered Harriet's imagination, for Harriet had acknowledged her admiration and preference of Frank Churchill before she had ever given her a hint on the subject, but she felt completely guilty of having encouraged what she might have repressed. She might have prevented the indulgence and increase of such sentiments. Her influence would have been enough, and now she was very conscious that she ought to have prevented them. She felt that she had been risking her friend's happiness on most insufficient grounds. Common sense would have directed her to tell Harriet that she must not allow herself to think of him, and that there were five hundred chances to one against his ever caring for her. But with common sense, she added, I am afraid I have had little to do. She was extremely angry with herself. If she could not have been angry with Frank Churchill, too, it would have been dreadful. As for Jane Fairfax, she might at least relieve her feelings from any present solicitude on her account. Harriet would be very anxiety enough. She need no longer be unhappy about Jane, whose troubles and whose ill-health having, of course, the same origin, must be equally under cure. Her days of insignificance and evil were over. She would soon be well and happy and prosperous. Emma could now imagine why her own attentions had been slighted. This discovery laid many smaller matters open. No doubt it had been from jealousy. In Jane's eyes she had been a rival, and well might any things she could offer of assistance or regard be repulsed. An airing in the Hartfield carriage would have been the rack and arrow-root from the Hartfield storeroom must have been poisoned. She understood it all, and as far as her mind could disengage itself from the injustice and selfishness of angry feelings, she acknowledged that Jane Fairfax would have neither elevation nor happiness beyond her desert. But poor Harriet was such an engrossing charge there was little sympathy to be spared for anybody else. Emma was sadly fearful that this second disappointment would be more severe than the first. Considering the very superior claims of the object, it ought, and judging by its apparently stronger effect on Harriet's mind, producing reserve and self-command, it would—she must communicate the painful truth, however, as soon as possible. An injunction of secrecy had been among Mr. Weston's parting words. For the present the whole affair was to be completely a secret. Mr. Churchill had made a point of it, as a token of respect to the wife he had so very recently lost, and everybody admitted it to be no more than due decorum. Emma had promised, but still Harriet must be accepted. It was her superior duty. In spite of her vexation she could not help feeling it almost ridiculous that she should have the very same distressing and delicate office to perform by Harriet, which Mrs. Weston had just gone through herself. The intelligence, which had been so anxiously announced to her, she was now anxiously announcing to another. Her heart beat quick on hearing Harriet's footstep and voice, so she supposed had poor Mrs. Weston felt when she was approaching Randall's. Could the event of the disclosure bear an equal resemblance? But of that, unfortunately there could be no chance. Well, Miss Woodhouse cried Harriet, coming equally into the room. Is this not the oddest news that ever was? What news do you mean? replied Emma, unable to guess, by look or voice whether Harriet could indeed have received any hint. About Jane Fairfax. Did you ever hear anything so strange? Oh, you need not be afraid of owning it to me, for Mr. Weston has told me himself. I met him just now. He told me it was to be a great secret, and therefore I should not think of mentioning it to anybody but you, but he said you knew it. What did Mr. Weston tell you? said Emma, still perplexed. Oh, he told me all about it, that Jane Fairfax and Mr. Frank Churchill are to be married, and that they have been privately engaged to one another this long while. How very odd! It was indeed so odd. Harriet's behavior was so extremely odd that Emma did not know how to understand it. Her character appeared absolutely changed. She seemed to propose showing no agitation or disappointment or peculiar concern in the discovery. Emma looked at her, quite unable to speak. Had you any idea, cried Harriet, of his being in love with her? You perhaps might—you blushing as she spoke—who can see into everybody's heart, but nobody else. On my word, said Emma, I begin to doubt my having any such talent. Can you seriously ask me, Harriet, whether I imagined him attached to another woman at the very time that I was tacitly, if not openly, encouraging you to give way to your own feelings? I never had the slightest suspicion till within the last hour of Mr. Frank Churchill's having the least regard for Jane Fairfax. You may be very sure that if I had, I should have cautioned you accordingly. Me! cried Harriet, colouring and astonished. Why should you caution me? You do not think that I care about Mr. Frank Churchill. I am delighted to hear you speak so stoutly on the subject, replied Emma, smiling. But you do not mean to deny that there was a time, and not very distant, either, when you gave me reason to understand that you did care about him? Him? Never, never. Dear Miss Woodhouse, how could you so mistake me? Turning away distressed. Harriet! cried Emma, after a moment's pause. What do you mean? Lord Heaven, what do you mean? Mistake you. Am I to suppose, then? She could not speak another word. Her voice was lost, and she sat down, waiting in great terror till Harriet should answer. Harriet, who was standing at some distance, and with faith turned from her, did not immediately say anything, and when she did speak it was in a voice nearly as agitated as Emma's. I should not have thought it possible, she began, that you could have misunderstood me. I know we agreed never to name him, but considering how infinitely superior he is to everybody else, I should not have thought it possible that I could be supposed to mean any other person. Mr. Frank Churchill, indeed, I do not know who would ever look at him in the company of the other. I hope I have a better taste than to think of Mr. Frank Churchill, who is like nobody by his side. And that you should have been so mistaken is amazing. I am sure, but for believing that you entirely approved and meant to encourage me in my attachment, I should have considered it, at first, to greater presumption almost, to dare to think of him. At first, if you had not told me that more wonderful things had happened, that there had been matches of greater disparity, those were your very words. I should not have dared to give way to—I should not have thought it possible. But if you, who had been always acquainted with him—Harriet! cried Emma, collecting herself resolutely. Let us understand each other now without the possibility of farther mistake. Are you speaking of Mr. Knightley? To be sure I am. I could never have an idea of anybody else, and so I thought you knew. When we talked about him it was as clear as possible. Not quite, returned Emma, with forced calmness, for all that you said then appeared to me to relate to a different person. I could almost assert that you had named Mr. Frank Churchill. I am sure the service Mr. Frank Churchill had rendered you in protecting you from the gypsies was spoken of. Oh, Miss Woodhouse, how you do forget! My dear Harriet, I perfectly remember the substance of what I said on the occasion. I told you that I did not wonder at your attachment, that considering the service he had rendered you it was extremely natural, and you agreed to it, expressing yourself very warmly as to your sense of that service, and mentioning even what your sensations had been in seeing him come forward to your rescue, the impression of it is strong on my memory. Oh, dear! cried Harriet, now I recollect what you meant, but I was thinking of something very different at the time. It was not the gypsies, it was not Mr. Frank Churchill that I meant. No, with some elevation, I was thinking of a more precious circumstance, of Mr. Knightley's coming and asking me to dance, when Mr. Elton would not stand up with me, and when there was no other partner in the room. That was the kind action, that was the noble benevolence and generosity, that was the service which made me begin to feel how superior he was to every other being upon earth. Good God! cried Emma, this has been a most unfortunate, most deplorable mistake. What is to be done? You would not have encouraged me then if you had understood me. At least, however, I cannot be worse off than I should have been if the other had been the person, and now it is possible—she paused a few moments, Emma could not speak. I do not wonder, Miss Woodhouse, she resumed, that you should feel a great difference between the two, as to me or anybody. You must think one five hundred million times more above me than the other. But I hope, Miss Woodhouse, that supposing that if, strange as it may appear, but you know they were your own words, that more wonderful things had happened, matches of greater disparity had taken place than between Mr. Frank Churchill and me, and therefore it seems as if such a thing even as this may have occurred before. And if I should be so fortunate, beyond expression as to if Mr. Knightley should really—if he does not mind the disparity, I hope, dear Miss Woodhouse, that you will not set yourself against it and try to put difficulties in the way. But you are too good for that, I am sure. Harriet was standing at one of the windows. Emma turned round to look at her in consternation, and hastily said, Have you any idea of Mr. Knightley's returning your affection? Yes, replied Harriet modestly, but not fearfully. I must say that I have. Emma's eyes were instantly withdrawn, and she sat silently meditating in a fixed attitude for a few minutes. A few minutes were sufficient for making her acquainted with her own heart. A mind like hers, once opening to suspicion, made rapid progress. She touched, she admitted, she acknowledged the whole truth. Why was it so much worse that Harriet should be in love with Mr. Knightley than with Frank Churchill? Why was the evil so dreadfully increased by Harriet's having some hope of a return? It darted through her, with the speed of an arrow, that Mr. Knightley must marry no one but herself. Her own conduct, as well as her own heart, was before her in the same few minutes. She saw it all with a clearness which had never blessed her before. How improperly had she been acting by Harriet? How inconsiderate? How indelicate? How irrational? How unfeeling had been her conduct? What blindness? What madness had let her on? It struck her with a dreadful force, and she was ready to give it every bad name in the world. Some portion of respect for herself, however, in spite of all these demerits, some concern for her own appearance, and a strong sense of justice by Harriet. There would be no need of compassion to the girl who believed herself loved by Mr. Knightley, but justice required that she should not be made unhappy by any coldness now, gave Emma the resolution to sit and endure farther with calmness, with even apparent kindness. For her own advantage indeed it was fit that the utmost extent of Harriet's hope should be inquired into, and Harriet had done nothing to forfeit the regard and interest which had been so voluntarily formed and maintained, or to deserve to be slided by the person whose counsels had never let her write. Rousing from affliction, therefore, and subduing her emotion, she turned to Harriet again, and in a more inviting accent renewed the conversation, for as to the subject which had first introduced it, the wonderful story of Jane Fairfax, that was quite sunk and lost. Neither of them thought but of Mr. Knightley and themselves. Harriet, who had been standing in no unhappy reverie, was yet very glad to be called from it, by the now encouraging manner of such a judge and such a friend as Miss Woodhouse, and only wanted an invitation to give the history of her hopes with great, though trembling, delight. Emma's tremblings, as she asked, and as she listened, were better concealed than Harriet's, but they were not less. Her voice was not unsteady, but her mind was in all the perturbation that such a development of self, such a burst of threatening evil, such a confusion of sudden and perplexing emotions, must create. She listened with much inward suffering, but with great outward patience, to Harriet's detail. Methodical, or well arranged, or very well delivered, it could not be expected to be, but it contained, when separated from all the feebleness and tautology of the narration, a substance to sink her spirit, especially with the corroborating circumstances which her own memory brought in favor of Mr. Knightley's most improved opinion of Harriet. Harriet had been conscious of a difference in his behavior ever since those two decisive dances. Emma knew that he had, on that occasion, found her much superior to his expectation. From that evening, or at least from the time of Miss Woodhouse's encouraging her to think of him, Harriet had begun to be sensible of his talking to her much more than he had been used to do, and of his having, indeed, quite a different manner towards her, a manner of kindness and sweetness. Laterally she had been more and more aware of it. When they had been all walking together he had so often come and walked by her, and taught so very delightfully, he seemed to want to be acquainted with her. Emma knew it to have been very much the case. She had often observed the change to almost the same extent. Harriet repeated expressions of approbation and praise from him, and Emma felt them to be in the closest agreement with what she had known of his opinion of Harriet. He praised her for being without art or affection, for having simple, honest, generous feelings. She knew that he saw such recommendations in Harriet. He had dwelt on them, to her more than once, much that lived in Harriet's memory, many little particulars of the notice she had received from him, a look, a speech, a removal from one chair to another. A compliment implied a preference inferred had been unnoticed, because unsuspected by Emma. Circumstances that might swell to half an hour's relation, and contained multiplied proofs to her who had seen them, had passed undissurbed by her who now heard them, but the two latest occurrences to be mentioned, the two of strongest promise to Harriet, were not without some degree of witness from Emma herself. The first was his walking with her, apart from the others, in the Lime Walk at Donwell, where they had been walking some time before Emma came, and he had taken great pains, she was convinced, to draw her from the rest to himself, and at first he had talked to her in a more particular way than he had ever done before, in a very particular way indeed. Harriet could not recall it without a blush. He seemed to be almost asking her whether her affections were engaged. But as soon as she, Miss Woodhouse, appeared likely to join them, he changed the subject, and began talking about farming. The second was his having sat talking with her nearly half an hour before Emma came back from her visit, the very last morning of his being at Hartfield, though when he first came he had said that he could not stay five minutes, and his having told her, during their conversation, that though he must go to London, it was very much against his inclination that he left home at all, which was much more as Emma felt than he had acknowledged to her. The superior degree of confidence towards Harriet, which this one article marked, gave her severe pain. On the subject of the first of the two circumstances she did, after a little reflection, venture the following question. Might he not—is it not possible that when inquiring, as you thought, into the state of your affections, he might be alluding to Mr. Martin, he might have Mr. Martin's interest in view? But Harriet rejected the suspicion with spirit. Mr. Martin! No, indeed. There was not a hint of Mr. Martin. I hope I know better now than to care for Mr. Martin, or to be suspected of it. When Harriet had closed her evidence, she appealed to her dear Miss Woodhouse to say whether she had not good ground for hope. I should never have presumed to think of it at first, said she, but for you. You told me to observe him carefully, and let his behaviour be the rule of mine, and so I have. But now I seem to feel that I may deserve him, and that if he does choose me, it will not be anything so very wonderful. The bitter feelings occasioned by this speech, the many bitter feelings, made the utmost exertion necessary on Emma's side, to enable her to say, on reply, Harriet, I will only venture to declare that Mr. Knightley is the last man in the world who would intentionally give any woman the idea of its feeling more for her than he really does. Harriet seemed ready to worship her friend for a sentence so satisfactory, and Emma was only saved from raptures and fondness, which at that moment would have been dreadful penance by the sound of her father's footsteps. He was coming through the hall. Harriet was too much agitated to encounter him. She could not compose herself, Mr. Woodhouse would be alarmed, she had better go. With most ready encouragement from her friend, therefore, she passed off through another door, and the moment she was gone, this was the spontaneous burst of Emma's feelings. Oh, God, that I had never seen her! The rest of the day, the following night, were hardly enough for her thoughts. She was bewildered amidst the confusion of all that had rushed on her within the last few hours. Every moment had brought a fresh surprise, and every surprise must be a matter of humiliation to her. How to understand it all? How to understand the deceptions she had been thus practicing on herself and living under? The blunders, the blindness of her own head and heart. She sat still, she walked about, she tried her own room, she tried the shrubbery. In every place, every posture, she perceived that she had acted most weakly, that she had been imposed on by others in a most mortifying degree, that she had been imposing herself in a degree yet more mortifying, that she was wretched, and should probably find this day but the beginning of wretchedness. To understand, thoroughly understand her own heart, was the first endeavor. To that point went every leisure moment which her father's claims on her allowed, and every moment of involuntary absence of mind. How long had Mr. Knightley been so dear to her, as every feeling declared him now to be? When had his influence such influence begun? When had he succeeded to that place in her affection which Frank Churchill had once for a short period occupied? She looked back, she compared the two, compared them as they had always stood in her estimation, from the time of the ladders becoming known to her, and as they must at any time have been compared by her, had it, oh, had it by any blessed felicity occurred to her to institute the comparison, she saw that there had never been a time when she did not consider Mr. Knightley as infinitely the superior, or when his regard for her had not been infinitely the most dear. She saw that in persuading herself, infancying, in acting to the contrary, she had been entirely under delusion, totally ignorant of her own heart, and in short, that she had never really cared for Frank Churchill at all. This was the conclusion of the first series of reflection. This was the knowledge of herself, on the first question of inquiry which she reached, and without being long in reaching it. She was most sorrowfully indignant, ashamed of every sensation but the one revealed to her, her affection for Mr. Knightley. Every other part of her mind was disgusting. With insufferable vanity had she believed herself in the secret of everybody's feelings, with unpardonable arrogance proposed to arrange everybody's destiny. She was proved to have been universally mistaken. She had not quite done nothing, for she had done mischief. She had brought evil on Harriet, on herself, and she too much feared on Mr. Knightley. Were this most unequal of connections to take place, on her must rest all the reproach of having given it a beginning. For his attachment she must believe to be produced only by a consciousness of Harriet's, and even were this not the case he would never have known Harriet at all but for her folly. Mr. Knightley and Harriet Smith. It was a union to distance every wonder of the kind. The attachment of Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax became commonplace. Threadbear, stale in the comparison, exciting no surprise, presenting no disparity, affording nothing to be said or thought. Mr. Knightley and Harriet Smith, such an elevation on her side, such a debasement on his. It was horrible to Emma to think how it must sink him in the general opinion. To foresee the smiles, the sneers, the merriment it would prompt at his expense. The mortification and disdain of his brother, the thousand inconveniences to himself. Could it be? No, it was impossible. And yet it was far, very far from impossible. Was it a new circumstance for a man of first rate abilities to be captivated by very inferior powers? Was it new, for one, perhaps too busy to seek, to be the prize of a girl who would seek him? Was it new for anything in this world to be unequal, inconsistent, incongruous, or for change in circumstance, as second causes, to direct the human fate? Oh, had she never brought Harriet forward? Had she left her where she ought, and where he had told her she ought? Had she not, with a folly which no tongue could express, prevented her marrying the unexceptionable young man, who would have made her happy and respectable in the line of life to which she ought to belong? All would have been safe. None of this dreadful sequel would have been. How Harriet could have ever had the presumption to raise her thoughts to Mr. Knightley? How, she could dare to fancy herself the chosen of such a man till actually assured of it. But Harriet was less humble, had fewer scruples than formerly. Her inferiority, whether of mind or situation, seemed little felt. She had seemed more sensible of Mr. Elton's being to stoop in marrying her than she now seemed of Mr. Knightley's. Alas, was that not her own doing too? Who had been at pains to give Harriet notions of self- consequence but herself? Who but herself had taught her that she was to elevate herself if possible, and that her claims were great to a high worldly establishment? If Harriet, from being humble, were grown vain, it was her doing too. CHAPTER XII. Till now that she was threatened with its loss, Emma had never known how much of her happiness depended on being first with Mr. Knightley, first in interest and affection. Satisfied that it was so, and feeling at her due, she had enjoyed it without reflection, and only in the dread of being supplanted found how inexpressibly important it had been. Long, very long, she felt she had been first. For having no female connections of his own, there had been only Isabella, whose claims could be compared with hers, and she had always known exactly how far he loved and esteemed Isabella. She had herself been first with him for many years past. She had not deserved it. She had often been negligent or perverse, sliding his advice or even willfully opposing him, insensible of half his merits and quarreling with him because he would not acknowledge her false and insolent estimate of her own. But still, from family attachment and habit, and thorough excellence of mind, he had loved her and watched over her from a girl, with an endeavour to improve her, and an anxiety for her doing right, which no other creature had at all shared. In spite of all her faults she knew she was dear to him. Might she not say, very dear? When the suggestion of hope, however, which must follow her, when the suggestions of hope, however, which must follow here, presented themselves, she could not presume to indulge them. Harriet Smith might think herself not unworthy of being peculiarly exclusively, passionately loved by Mr. Knightley. She could not. She could not flatter herself with any idea of blindness in his attachment to her. She had received a very recent proof of his impartiality. How shocked he had been by her behaviour to Miss Bates. How directly, how strongly had he expressed himself to her on the subject? Not too strongly for the offence, but far, far too strongly to issue from any feeling softer than upright justice and clear-sided goodwill. She had no hope, nothing to deserve the name of hope, that he could have that sort of affection for herself, which was now in question. But there was a hope, at times a slight one, at times much stronger, that Harriet might have deceived herself, and be overrating his regard for her. Wish it she must, for his sake, be the consequence nothing to herself, but his remaining single all his life. Could she be secure of that, indeed, of his never marrying at all? She believed she should be perfectly satisfied. Let him but continue the same Mr. Knightley to her and her father, the same Mr. Knightley to all the world. Let Donwell and Hartfield lose none of their precious intercourse of friendship and confidence, and her peace would be fully secured. Marriage, in fact, would not do for her. It would be incompatible with what she owed to her father and with what she felt for him. Nothing should separate her from her father. She would not marry, even if she were asked, by Mr. Knightley. It must be her ardent wish that Harriet might be disappointed, and she hoped, that when able to see them together again, she might at least be able to ascertain what the chances for it were. She should see them henceforward with the closest observance, and wretchedly, as she had hitherto misunderstood even those she was watching, she did not know how to admit that she could be blinded here. He was expected back every day. The power of observation would be soon given. Frightfully soon it appeared when her thoughts were in one course. In the meanwhile she resolved against seeing Harriet. It would do neither of them good. It would do the subject no good, to be talking of it farther. She was resolved not to be convinced as long as she could doubt, and yet had no authority for opposing Harriet's confidence. To talk would be only to irritate. She wrote to her, therefore kindly but decisively, to beg that she would not, at present, come to Hartfield, acknowledging it to be her conviction that all farther confidential discussion of one topic had better be avoided, and hoping that if a few days were allowed to pass before they met again, except in the company of others, she objected only to a tête-à-tête. They might be able to act as if they had forgotten the conversation of yesterday. Harriet submitted and approved, and was grateful. This point was just arranged when a visitor arrived to tear Emma's thoughts a little from the subject which had engrossed them, keeping or waking the last twenty-four hours. Mrs. Weston, who had been calling on her daughter-in-law, elect, and took Hartfield in her way home, almost as much in duty to Emma as in pleasure to herself, to relate all the particulars of so interesting an interview. Mr. Weston had accompanied her to Mrs. Bates's, and gone through his share of this essential attention most handsomely. But she having then induced Miss Fairfax to join her in an airing, was now returned with much more to say, and much more to say with satisfaction, than a quarter of an hour spent in Mrs. Bates's parlour, with all the incumbrance of awkward feelings could have afforded. A little curiosity Emma had, and she made the most of it while her friend related. Mrs. Weston had set off to pay the visit in a good deal of agitation herself, and in the first place had wished not to go at all at present, to be allowed merely to write to Miss Fairfax instead, and to defer this ceremonious call till a little time had passed, and Mr. Churchill could be reconciled to the engagements becoming known. As considering everything she thought such a visit could not be paid without leading to reports. But Mr. Weston had thought differently. He was extremely anxious to show his approbation to Miss Fairfax and her family, and did not conceive that any suspicion could be excited by it, or if it were that it would be of any consequence, for such things he observed always got about. Emma smiled and felt that Mr. Weston had very good reason for saying so. They had gone, in short, and very great had been the evident distress and confusion of the lady. She had hardly been able to speak a word, and every look and action had shown how deeply she was suffering from consciousness. The quiet, heartfelt satisfaction of the old lady, and the rapturous delight of her daughter, who proved even too joyous to talk as usual, had been a gratifying, yet almost an affecting scene. They were both so truly respectable in their happiness, so disinterested in every sensation, thought so much of Jane, so much of everybody, and so little of themselves, that every kindly feeling was at work for them. Miss Fairfax's recent illness had offered a fair plea for Mrs. Weston to invite her to an airing. She had drawn back and declined at first, but on being pressed had yielded, and in the course of their drive, Mrs. Weston had, by gentle encouragement, overcome so much of her embarrassment as to bring her to converse on the important subject. Apologies for her seeming ungracious silence in their first reception, and the warmest expressions of the gratitude she was always feeling towards herself and Mr. Weston, must necessarily open the cause. But when these effusions were put by, they had talked a good deal of the present and of the future state of the engagement. Mrs. Weston was convinced that such conversation must be the greatest relief to her companion, pent up within her own mind as everything had so long been, and was very much pleased with all that she had said on the subject. On the misery of what she had suffered during the concealment of so many months, continued Mrs. Weston, she was energetic. This was one of her expressions. I will not say that since I entered into the engagement I have not had some happy moments, but I can say that I have never known the blessing of one tranquil hour. And the quivering lip, Emma, which uttered it, was an attestation that I felt at my heart. "'Poor girl,' said Emma. She thinks herself wrong then for having consented to a private engagement. Wrong! No one, I believe, can blame her more than she is disposed to blame herself. The consequence, said she, has been a state of perpetual suffering to me, and so it ought. But after all the punishment that misconduct can bring, it is still not less misconduct. Pain is no expiation. I can never be blameless. I have been acting contrary to all my sense of right, and the fortunate turn that everything has taken, and the kindness I am now receiving, is what my conscious tells me ought not to be. "'Do not imagine, madam,' she continued, that I was taught wrong. Do not let any reflection fall on the principles or the care of the friends who brought me up. The error has been all my own. I do assure you that, with all the excuse that present circumstances may appear to give, I shall yet dread making the story known to Colonel Campbell.' "'Poor girl,' said Emma again. She loves him then excessively, I suppose. It must have been from attachment only that she could be led to form the engagement. Her affection must have overpowered her judgment. Yes, I have no doubt of her being extremely attached to him. I am afraid,' returned Emma, sighing, that I must often have contributed to make her unhappy. On your side, my love, it was very innocently done. But she probably had something of that in her thoughts, when alluding to the misunderstandings which she had given us hints of before. One natural consequence of the evil she had vaulted herself in, she said, was that of making her unreasonable. The consciousness of having done a mis had exposed her to a thousand inquietudes, and made her capchess and irritable to a degree that must have been—that had been—hard for him to bear. I did not make allowances, said she, which I ought to have done, for his temper and spirits, his delightful spirits, and that gaiety, that playfulness of disposition, which under any other circumstances, would, I am sure, have been as constantly bewitching to me as they were at first. She then began to speak of you and of the great kindness you had shown during her illness, and with a blush which showed me how it was all connected, desired me, whenever I had an opportunity to thank you. I could not thank you too much, for every wish and every endeavor to do her good. She was sensible that she had never received any proper acknowledgment from herself. If I did not know her to be happy now, said Emma seriously, which in spite of every little drawback from her scrupulous conscience, she must be, I could not bear these thanks, for, oh, Mrs. Weston, if there were an account drawn up of the evil and the good I have done to Ms. Fairfax—well, checking herself and trying to be more lively, this is all to be forgotten. You are very kind to bring me these interesting particulars. They show her to the greatest advantage. I am sure she is very good. I hope she will be very happy. It is fit that the fortune should be all on his side, for I think the merit will be all on hers. Such a conclusion could not pass unanswered by Mrs. Weston. She thought well of Frank in almost every respect, and what was more, she loved him very much, and her defense was therefore earnest. She talked with a great deal of reason, and at least equal affection. But she had too much to urge for Emma's attention, and it was soon gone to Brunswick Square or to Donwell. She forgot to attempt to listen, and when Mrs. Weston ended with, we have not yet had the letter we are so anxious for, you know, but I hope it will soon come. She was obliged to pause before she answered, and at last obliged to answer at random, before she could at all recollect what letter it was which they were so anxious for. Are you well, my Emma? was Mrs. Weston's parting question. Oh, perfectly! I am always well, you know. Be sure to give me intelligence of the letter as soon as possible. Mrs. Weston's communications furnished Emma with more food for unpleasant reflection, by increasing her esteem and compassion, and her sense of past injustice towards Miss Fairfax. She bitterly regretted not having sought a closer acquaintance with her, and blushed for the envious feelings which had certainly been, in some measure, the cause. Had she followed Mr. Knightley's known wishes in paying that attention to Miss Fairfax, which was every way her do, had she tried to know her better, had she done her part towards intimacy, had she endeavored to find a friend there instead of in Harriet Smith, she must, in all probability, have been spared from every pain which pressed on her now. Birth, abilities, and education had been equally marking one as an associate for her, to be received with gratitude, and the other, what was she? Supposing even that they had never become intimate friends, that she had never been admitted into Miss Fairfax's confidence on this important matter, which was most probable. Still, in knowing her as she ought, and as she might, she must have been preserved from the abominable suspicions of an improper attachment to Mr. Dixon, which she had not only foolishly fashioned and harbored herself, but had so unpardonably imparted, an idea which she greatly feared had been made a subject of material distress to the delicacy of Jane's feelings by the levity or carelessness of Frank Churchill's. Of all the sources of evil surrounding the former, since her coming to Highbury, she was persuaded that she must herself have been the worst. She must have been a perpetual enemy. They never could have been all three together without her having stabbed Jane Fairfax's peace in a thousand instances, and on Box Hill, perhaps, it had been the agony of a mind that would bear no more. The evening of this day was very long and melancholy at Hartfield. The weather added what it could have gloom. A cold, stormy rain set in, and nothing of July appeared but in the trees and shrubs, which the wind was despoiling, and the length of the day which only made such cruel sights the longer visible. The weather affected Mr. Woodhouse, and he could only be kept tolerably comfortable by almost ceaseless attention on his daughter's side, and by exertions which had never cost her half so much before. It reminded her of their first forlorn terrattette, on the evening of Mrs. Weston's wedding day, but Mr. Knightley had walked in then, soon after tea, and dissipated every melancholy fancy. Alas, such delightful proofs of Hartfield's attraction, as those sort of visits conveyed, might shortly be over. The picture, which she had then drawn of the privations of the approaching winter, had proved erroneous. No friends had deserted them, no pleasures had been lost. But her present foreboding, she feared, would experience no similar contradiction. The prospect before her now was threatening to a degree that could be not entirely dispelled, that might not even be partially brightened. If all took place that might take place among the circle of her friends, Hartfield must be comparatively deserted, and she left to cheer her father with the spirits only of ruined happiness. The child to be born at Randalls must be a tie there even dearer than herself, and Mrs. Weston's heart and time would be occupied by it. They should lose her, and probably in great measure her husband also. Frank Churchill would return among them no more, and Miss Fairfax, it was reasonable to suppose, would soon cease to belong to Highbury. They would be married, and settled either at or near Enscombe. All that were good would be withdrawn, and if to these losses the loss of Donwell were to be added, what would remain of cheerful or rational society within their reach? Mr. Knightley to be no longer coming there for his evening comfort, no longer walking in at all hours, as if ever willing to change his own home for theirs. How was it to be endured? And if he were to be lost to them for Harriet's sake, if he were to be thought of hereafter as finding in Harriet's society all that he wanted, if Harriet were to be the chosen, the first, the dearest, the friend, the wife to whom he looked for all the best blessings of existence, what could be increasing Emma's wretchedness but the reflection, never far distant from her mind, that it had all been her own work? When it came to such a pitch as this, she was not able to refrain from a start, or a heavy sigh, or even from walking about the room for a few seconds, and the only source whence anything like consolation or composure could be drawn was in the resolution of her own better conduct, and the hope that, however inferior in spirit and gaiety might be the following and every future winter of her life to the past, it would yet find her more rational, more acquainted with herself, and leave her less to regret when it were gone. End of Volume 3, Chapter 12, read by Cibela Denton. For more information please visit LibriVox.org. Volume 3, Chapter 13 of Emma by Jane Austen. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. The weather continued much the same all the following morning, and the same loneliness, and the same melancholy, seemed to rain at Hartfield. But in the afternoon it cleared, the wind changed into a softer quarter, the clouds were carried off, the sun appeared, it was summer again. With all the eagerness which such a transition gives, Emma resolved to be out of doors as soon as possible. Never had the exquisite sight, smell, sensation of nature, tranquil, warm, and brilliant after a storm, been more attractive to her. She longed for the serenity they might gradually introduce, and on Mr. Perry's coming in soon after dinner, with a disengaged hour to give her father, she lost no time ill-hurrying into the shrubbery. There, with spirits freshened, and thoughts a little relieved, she had taken a few turns, when she saw Mr. Knightley passing through the garden door and coming towards her. It was the first intimation of his being returned from London. She had been thinking of him the moment before, as unquestionably sixteen miles distant. There was time only for the quickest arrangement of mind. She must be collected and calm. In half a minute they were together. The Howdy-dos were quiet and constrained on each side. She asked after their mutual friends they were all well. When had he left them? Only that morning. He must have had a wet ride. Yes. He meant to walk with her, she found. He had just looked into the dining-room, and as he was not wanted there preferred being out of doors. She thought he neither looked nor spoke cheerfully, and the first possible cause for it, suggested by her fears, was that he had perhaps been communicating his plans to his brother, and was pained by the manner in which they had been received. They walked together. He was silent. She thought he was often looking at her and trying for a fuller view of her face than it suited her to give. And this belief produced another dread. Perhaps he wanted to speak to her of his attachment to Harriet. He might be watching for encouragement to begin. She did not, could not, feel equal to lead the way to any such subject. He must do it all himself. Yet she could not bear this silence. With him it was most unnatural. She considered, resolved, and trying to smile began. You have some news to hear. Now you are come back that will rather surprise you. Have I, he said quietly, and looking at her, of what nature? Oh! the best nature in the world! A wedding! After waiting a moment, as if to be sure she intended to say no more, he replied, If you mean Miss Fairfax and Frank Churchill, I have heard that already. How is it possible, cried Emma, turning her glowing cheeks towards him, for while she spoke it occurred to her that he might have called at Mrs. Goddard's in his way. I had a few lines on parish business for Mr. Weston this morning, and at the end of them he gave me a brief account of what had happened. Emma was quite relieved and could presently say, with a little more composure, You probably have been less surprised than any of us, for you have had your suspicions. I have not forgotten that you once tried to give me a caution. I wish I had attended to it, but with a sinking voice and a heavy sigh. I seem to have been doomed to blindness. For a moment or two nothing was said, and she was unsuspicious of having excited any particular interest, till she found her arm drawn within his and pressed against his heart and heard him thus saying, in a tone of great sensibility, speaking low, Time, my dearest Emma, time will heal the wound. Your own excellent sense, your exertions for your father's sake, I know you will not allow yourself. Her arm was pressed again, as he added in a more broken and subdued accent. The feelings of the warmest friendship, indignation, abominable scoundrel. And in a louder, steadier tone he concluded with, He will soon be gone, they will soon be in Yorkshire. I am sorry for her. She deserves a better fate. Emma understood him, and as soon as she could recover from the flutter of pleasure, excited by such tender consideration, replied, You are very kind, but you are mistaken, and I must set you right. I am not in want of that sort of compassion. My blindness to what was going on led me to act by them in a way that I must always be ashamed of, and I was very foolishly tempted to say and do many things which may well let me open to unpleasant conjectures. But I have no other reason to regret that I was not in the secret earlier. Emma, cried he, looking eagerly at her, are you indeed? But checking himself. No, no, I understand you, forgive me. I am pleased that you can say even so much. He is no object of regret indeed, and it will not be very long, I hope, before that becomes the acknowledgment of more than your reason. Fortunate that your affections were not further entangled. I could never, I confess, from your manners assure myself as to the decree of what you felt. I could only be certain that there was a preference, and a preference which I never believed him to deserve. He is a disgrace to the name of man. And is he to be rewarded with that sweet young woman? Jane, Jane, you will be a miserable creature. Mr. Knightley, said Emma, trying to be lightly, but really confused. I am in a very extraordinary situation. I cannot let you continue in your error. And yet, perhaps, since my manners gave such an impression, I have as much reason to be ashamed of confessing that I never have been at all attached to the person we are speaking of, as it might be natural for a woman to feel in confessing exactly the reverse. But I never have. He listened in perfect silence. She wished him to speak, but he would not. She supposed she must say more before she were entitled to his clemency, but it was a hard case to be obliged still to lower herself in his opinion. She went on however. I have very little to say for my own conduct. I was tempted by his attentions and allowed myself to appear pleased. An old story, probably, a common case, and no more than has happened to hundreds of my sex before, and yet it may not be the more excusable in one who sets up as I do for understanding. Many circumstances assisted the temptation. He was the son of Mr. Weston. He was continually here. I always found him very pleasant, and in short, for, with a sigh, let me swell out the causes ever so ingeniously, they all center in this last, my vanity was flattered, and I allowed his attentions. Latterly, however, for some time indeed, I have had no idea of their meaning anything. I thought them a habit, a trick, nothing that called for seriousness on my side. He has imposed on me, but he has not injured me. I have never been attached to him. And now I can tolerably comprehend his behavior. He never wished to attach me. It was merely a blind to conceal his real situation with another. It was his object to blind all about him, and no one, I am sure, could be more effectually blinded than myself, except that I was not blinded, that it was my good fortune that, in short, I was somehow or other safe from him. She had hoped for an answer here, for a few words to say that her conduct was at least intelligible, but he was silent, and as far as she could judge deep in thought. At last, and tolerably in his usual tone, he said, I have never had a high opinion of Frank Churchill. I can suppose, however, that I may have underrated him. My acquaintance with him has been trifling, and even if I have not underrated him hither too, he may yet turn out well. With such a woman he has a chance. I have no motive for wishing him ill, and for her sake, whose happiness will be involved in his good character and conduct, I shall certainly wish him well. I have no doubt of their being happy together, said Emma. I believe them to be very mutually and very sincerely attached. He is a most fortunate man, returned Mr. Knightley, with energy, so early in life, at three and twenty, a period when, if a man chooses a wife, he generally chooses ill. At three and twenty to have drawn such a prize. What year is a felicity that man in all human calculation has before him? Assured of the love of such a woman, the disinterested love, for Jane Fairfax's character vouches for her disinterestedness. Everything in his favour, equality of situation, I mean, as far as regards society, and all the habits and manners that are important, equality in every point but one, and that one, since the purity of her heart is not to be doubted, such as must increase his felicity, for it will be his to bestow the only advantages she wants. A man would always wish to give a woman a better home than the one he takes her from, and he who can do it, where there is no doubt of her regard, must, I think, be the happiest of mortals. Frank Churchill is indeed the favourite of fortune. Everything turns out for his good. He meets with a young woman at a watering-place, gains her affection, cannot even weary her by negligent treatment, and had he and all his family sought round the world for a perfect wife for him, they could not have found her superior. His aunt is in the way, his aunt dies. He has only to speak. His friends are eager to promote his happiness. He had used everybody ill, and they are all delighted to forgive him. He is a fortunate man, indeed. You speak as if you envied him. And I do envy him, Emma. In one respect he is the object of my envy. Emma could say no more. They seemed to be within half a sentence of Harriet, and her immediate feeling was to avert the subject, if possible. She made her plan. She would speak of something totally different, the children in Brunswick Square, and she only waited for breath to begin when Mr. Knightley startled her by saying, You will not ask me what is the point of envy. You are determined, I see, to have no curiosity. You are wise, but I cannot be wise. Emma, I must tell you what you will not ask, though I may wish it unsaid the next moment. Oh, then don't speak it, don't speak it, she eagerly cried. Take a little time. Consider, do not commit yourself. Thank you, said he, in an accent of deep mortification, and not another syllable followed. Emma could not bear to give him pain. He was wishing to confide in her, perhaps to consult her, cost her what it would she would listen. She might assist his resolution, or reconcile him to it. She might give just praise to Harriet, or by representing to him his own independence, relieve him from that state of indecision, which must be more intolerable than any alternative to such a mind as his. They had reached the house. You are going in, I suppose, said he. No, replied Emma, quite confirmed by the depressed manner in which he still spoke. I should like to take another turn. Mr. Perry is not gone. And after proceeding a few steps she added, I stopped you ungraciously just now, Mr. Knightley, and I am afraid gave you pain. But if you have any wish to speak openly to me as a friend, or to ask my opinion of anything that you may have in contemplation, as a friend indeed you may command me, I will hear whatever you like. I will tell you exactly what I think. As a friend, repeated Mr. Knightley, Emma, that I fear is a word. No, I have no wish. Stay, yes, why should I hesitate? I have gone too far already for concealment. Emma, I accept your offer, extraordinary as it may seem, I accept it, and refer myself to you as a friend. Tell me, then, have I no chance of ever succeeding? He stopped in his earnestness to look the question, and the expression of his eyes overpowered her. My dearest Emma, said he, for dearest you will always be, whatever the event of this hour's conversation. My dearest, most beloved Emma, tell me at once. Say no, if it is to be said. She could really say nothing. You are silent, he cried, with great animation. Absolutely silent. At present I ask no more. Emma was almost ready to sink under the agitation of this moment. The dread of being awakened from the happiest dream was perhaps the most prominent feeling. I cannot make speeches, Emma, he soon resumed, and in a tone of such sincere, decided, intelligible tenderness as was tolerably convincing. If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am. You hear nothing but truth from me. I have blamed you and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other woman in England would have borne it. Bear with the truths, I would tell you now, dearest Emma, as well as you have borne with them. The manner, perhaps, may have as little to recommend them. God knows I have been a very indifferent lover, but you understand me. Yes, you see, you understand my feelings, and will return them if you can. At present I ask only to hear, once, to hear your voice. While he spoke, Emma's mind was most busy, and with all the wonderful velocity of thought had been able, and yet without losing a word, to catch and comprehend the exact truth of the whole, to see that Harriet's hopes had been entirely groundless, a mistake, a delusion, as completely a delusion as any of her own, that Harriet was nothing, that she was everything herself, that what she had been saying relative to Harriet had all been taken as the language of her own feelings, and that her agitation, her doubts, her reluctance, her discouragement, had been all received as discouragement from herself. And not only was there time for these convictions, with all their glow of attended happiness, there was time also to rejoice that Harriet's secret had not escaped her, and to resolve that it need not and should not. It was all the service she could now render her poor friend, for as to any of that heroism of sentiment which might have prompted her to entreat him to transfer his affection from herself to Harriet, as infinitely the most worthy of the two, or even the more simple sublimity of resolving to refuse him, at once and for ever, without vouchsafing any motive, because he could not marry them both, Emma had it not. She felt for Harriet with pain and with contrition, but no flight of generosity run mad, opposing all that could be probable or reasonable, entered her brain. She had led her friend astray, and it would be a reproach to her for ever, but her judgment was as strong as her feelings, and as strong as it had ever been before, in reparating any such alliance for him, as most unequal and degrading. Her way was clear, though not quite smooth. She spoke then on being so entreated. What did she say? Just what she ought, of course. A lady always does. She said enough to show that there need not be despair, and to invite him to say more himself. He had despaired at one period. He had received such an injunction to caution and silence, as for the time crushed every hope. She had begun by refusing to hear him. The change had perhaps been somewhat sudden. Her proposal of taking another turn, her renewing the conversation which she had just put an end to, might be a little extraordinary. She felt it's inconsistency, but Mr. Knightley was so obliging as to put up with it, and seek no farther explanation. Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure. Seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken. But where, as in this case, though the conduct is mistaken, the feelings are not, it may not be very material. Mr. Knightley could not impute to Emma a more relenting heart than she possessed, or a heart more disposed to accept of his. He had, in fact, been wholly unsuspicious of his own influence. He had followed her into the shrubbery with no idea of trying it. He had come, in his anxiety, to see how she bore Frank Churchill's engagement, with no selfish view, no view at all, but of endeavouring, if she allowed him an opening, to soothe her or counsel her. The rest had been the work of the moment, the immediate effect of what he had heard on his own feelings. The delightful assurance of her total indifference towards Frank Churchill, of her having a heart completely disengaged from him, had given birth to the hope that, in time, he might gain her affection himself. But it had been no present hope. He had only, in the momentary conquest of eagerness over judgment, aspired to be told that she did not forbid his attempt to attach her. The superior hopes which gradually opened were so much the more enchanting, which he had been asking to be allowed to create, if he could, was already his. Within half an hour he had passed from a thoroughly distressed state of mind to something so like perfect happiness that it could bear no other name. Her change was equal. This one half-hour had given to each the same precious certainty of being beloved, had cleared from each the same degree of ignorance, jealousy, or distrust. On his side there had been a long-standing jealousy, old as the arrival, or even the expectation of Frank Churchill. He had been in love with Emma and jealous of Frank from about the same period, one sentiment having probably enlightened him as to the other. It was his jealousy of Frank Churchill that had taken him from the country. The Box Hill Party had decided him on going away. He would save himself from witnessing again such permitted, encouraged attentions. He had gone to learn to be indifferent. But he had gone to the wrong place. There was too much domestic happiness in his brother's house. Even when war too amiable foremanate, Isabella was too much like Emma, differing only in those striking inferiorities which always brought the other in brilliancy before him. For much to have been done, even had his time been longer. He had stayed on, however, vigorously, day after day, till this very morning's post had conveyed the history of Jane Fairfax. Then with the gladness which must be felt, nay which he did not scruple to feel, having never believed Frank Churchill to be at all deserving Emma, was there so much fawn solicitude, so much keen anxiety for her, that he could stay no longer. He had ridden home through the rain, and had walked up directly after dinner to see how this sweetest and best of all creatures faultless in spite of all her faults bore the discovery. He had found her agitated and low. Frank Churchill was a villain. He heard her declare that she had never loved him. Frank Churchill's character was not desperate. She was his own Emma by hand and word, when they returned into the house, and if he could have thought of Frank Churchill then he might have deemed him a very good sort of fellow. End of Volume 3 Chapter 14 of Emma by Jane Austen Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain What totally different feelings did Emma take back into the house from what she had brought out? She had then been only daring to hope for a little respite of suffering. Now she was in an exquisite flutter of happiness, and such happiness, moreover, she believed must still be greater when the flutters should have passed away. They sat down to tea, the same party round the same table, how often it had been collected, and how often had her eyes fallen on the same shrubs in the lawn, and observed the same beautiful effect of the western sun. But never in such a state of spirits, never in anything like it, and it was with difficulty that she could summon enough of her usual self to be the attentive lady of the house, or even the attentive daughter. Poor Mr. Woodhouse little suspected what was plotting against him in the breast of that man whom he was so cordially welcoming and so anxiously hoping might not have taken cold from his ride. Could he have seen the heart he would have cared very little for the lungs, but without the most distant imagination of the appending evil, without the slightest perception of anything extraordinary in the looks or ways of either, he repeated to them, very comfortably, all the articles of news he had received from Mr. Perry, and talked on with much self-contentment, totally unsuspicious of what they could have told him in return. As long as Mr. Knightley remained with them, Emma's fever continued, but when he was gone she began to be a little tranquilized and subdued, and in the course of the sleepless night, which was the tax for such an evening, she found one or two such very serious points to consider as made her feel that even her happiness must have some alloy. Her father and Harriet. She could not be alone without feeling the full weight of their separate claims, and how to guard the comfort of both to the utmost was the question. With respect to her father it was a question soon answered. She hardly knew yet what Mr. Knightley would ask, but a very short parlay with her own heart produced the most solemn resolution of never quitting her father. She even wept over the idea of it as a sin of thought. While he lived it must be only an engagement, but she flattered herself that if divested of the danger of drawing her away it might become an increase of comfort to him. How to do her best by Harriet was of more difficult decision. How to spare her from any unnecessary pain. How to make her any possible atonement. How to appear leased her enemy. On these subjects her perplexity and distress were very great, and her mind had to pass again and again through every bitter reproach and sorrowful regret that had ever surrounded it. She could only resolve at last that she would still avoid a meeting with her and communicate all that need be told by letter, that it would be inexpressibly desirable to have her removed just now for a short time from Highbury, and indulging in one scheme more nearly resolved that it might be practicable to get an invitation for her to Brunswick Square, Isabella had been pleased with Harriet, and a few weeks spent in London must give her some amusement. She did not think it in Harriet's nature to escape being benefited by novelty and variety, by the streets, the shops, and the children. At any rate it would be a proof of attention and kindness in herself, from whom everything was due, a separation for the present and averting of the evil day when they must all be together again. She rose early and wrote her letter to Harriet, and employment which left her so very serious, so nearly sad, that Mr. Knightley, in walking up to Hartfield to breakfast, did not arrive at all too soon, and half an hour stolen afterwards to go over the same ground again with him, literally and figuratively, was quite necessary to reinstate her in a proper share of the happiness of the evening before. He had not left her long, by no means long enough for her to have the slightest inclination for thinking of anybody else, when a letter was brought her from Randall's, a very thick letter, she guessed what it must contain, and deprecated the necessity of reading it. She was now in perfect charity with Frank Churchill. She wanted no explanations, she wanted only to have her thoughts to herself, and as for understanding anything he wrote, she was sure she was incapable of it. It must be waded through, however. She opened the packet. It was too surely so. A note from Mrs. Weston to herself ushered in the letter from Frank to Mrs. Weston. I have the greatest pleasure, my dear Emma, in forwarding to you the enclosed. I know what thorough justice you will do it, and have scarcely a doubt of its happy effect. I think we shall never materially disagree about the writer again, but I will not delay you by a long preface. We are quite well. This letter has been the cure of all the little nervousness I have been feeling lately. I did not quite like your looks on Tuesday, but it was an ungenial morning, and, though you will never own being affected by the weather, I think everybody feels a northeast wind. I felt for your dear father very much in the storm of Tuesday afternoon and yesterday morning, but had the comfort of hearing last night by Mr. Perry that it had not made him ill. Yours ever, A.W. To Mrs. Weston. Windsor, July. My dear madam, if I made myself intelligible yesterday this letter will be expected, but expected or not I know it will be read with candor and indulgence. You are all goodness, and I believe there will be need of even all your goodness to allow for some parts of my past conduct, but I have been forgiven by one who had still more to resent. My courage rises while I write. It is very difficult for the prosperous to be humble. I have already met with such success in two applications for pardon that I may be in danger of thinking myself too sure of yours, and of those among your friends who have had any ground of offence. You must all endeavor to comprehend the exact nature of my situation when I first arrived at Randalls. You must consider me as having a secret which was to be kept at all hazards. This was the fact. My right to place myself in a situation requiring such concealment is another question. I shall not discuss it here. For my temptation to think at a right I refer every cavalier to a brick-house, sashed windows below and casements above in Highbury. I dared not address her openly. My difficulties in the then state of Enscombe must be too well known to require definition, and I was fortunate enough to prevail, before we parted at Weymouth, and to induce the most upright female mind in the creation to stoop in charity to a secret engagement. Had she refused, I should have gone mad. But you will be ready to say, What was your hope in doing this? What did you look forward to? To anything, everything, to time, chance, circumstance, slow effects, sudden bursts, perseverance and weariness, health and sickness. Every possibility of good was before me, and the first blessing secured in obtaining her promises of faith and correspondence. If you need farther explanation I have the honour, my dear madam, of being your husband's son, and the advantage of inheriting a disposition to hope for good, which no inheritance of houses or lands can ever equal the value of. See me then under these circumstances, arriving on my first visit to Randalls, and here I am conscious of wrong, for that visit might have been paid sooner. You will look back and see that I did not come till Miss Fairfax was in Highbury, and as you were the person slided, you will forgive me instantly. But I must work on my father's compassion by reminding him that so long as I absented myself from his house, so long I lost the blessing of knowing you. My behaviour during the very happy fortnight which I spent with you did not, I hope, lay me open to reprehension, accepting on one point. The only important part of my conduct, while belonging to you which excites my own anxiety, or requires very solicitous explanation. With the greatest respect and the warmest friendship do I mention Miss Woodhouse. My father, perhaps, will think a ought to add with the deepest humiliation. A few words which dropped from him yesterday spoke his own opinion, and some censure I acknowledge myself liable to. My behaviour to Miss Woodhouse indicated I believe more than it ought. In order to assist a concealment so essential to me, I was led on to make more than an allowable use of the sort of intimacy into which we were immediately thrown. I cannot deny that Miss Woodhouse was my ostensible object, but I am sure you will believe the declaration, that had I not been convinced of her indifference, I would not have been induced by any selfish views to go on. Amiable and delightful as Miss Woodhouse is, she never gave me the idea of a young woman likely to be attached, and that she was perfectly free from any tendency to being attached to me was as much my conviction as my wish. She received my attentions with an easy, friendly, good-humoured playfulness, which exactly suited me. We seemed to understand each other. From our relative situation those attentions were her due, and were felt to be so. Whether Miss Woodhouse began really to understand me before the expiration of that fortnight I cannot say. When I called to take leave of her I remember that I was within a moment of confessing the truth, and then I fancied she was not without suspicion, but I have no doubt of her having since detected me, at least in some degree. She may not have surmised the whole, but her quickness must have penetrated apart. I cannot doubt it. You will find, whenever the subject becomes freed from its present restraints, that it did not take her wholly by surprise. She frequently gave me hints of it. I remember her telling me at the ball that I owed Mrs. Elton gratitude for her attentions to Miss Fairfax. I hope this history of my conduct towards her will be admitted by you and my father as a great extenuation of what you saw amiss. While you considered me as having sinned against Emma Woodhouse I could deserve nothing from either. Equit me here and procure for me when it is allowable the acquittal and good wishes of that said Emma Woodhouse, whom I regard with so much brotherly affection as to long to have her as deeply and as happily in love myself. Whatever strange things I said or did during that fortnight you have now a key to. My heart was in hybrid and my business was to get my body thither as often as might be and with the least suspicion. If you remember any queernesses set them all to the right again. Of the Piano Forte so much talked of, I feel it only necessary to say that its being ordered was absolutely unknown to Miss F, who would never have allowed me to send it, had any choice been given to her. The delicacy of her mind throughout the whole engagement, my dear madam, is much beyond my power of doing justice to. You will soon, I earnestly hope, know her thoroughly yourself. No description can describe her. She must tell you herself what she is, yet not by word, for never was there a human creature who would so designedly suppress her own merit. Since I began this letter, which will be longer than I foresaw I have heard from her. She gives a good account of her own health, but as she never complains I dare not depend. I want to have your opinion of her works. I know you will soon call on her. She is living in dread of the visit. Perhaps it is paid already. Let me hear from you without delay. I am impatient for a thousand particulars. Remember how few minutes I was at Randalls, and in how bewildered, how mad a state, and I am not much better yet. Still insane from happiness or misery. When I think of the kindness and favour I have met with, of her excellence and patience, and my uncle's generosity, I am mad with joy. But when I recollect all the uneasiness I occasioned her, and how little I deserve to be forgiven, I am mad with anger. If I could but see her again. But I must not propose it yet. My uncle has been too good for me to encroach. I must still add to this long letter. You have not heard all that you ought to hear. I could not give any connected detail yesterday, but the suddenness and in one light the unseasonableness with which the affair burst out needs explanation. For though the event of the twenty-sixth, as you will conclude, immediately opened me to the happiest prospects, I should not have presumed on such early measures, but from the very particular circumstances which left me not an hour to lose. I should myself have shrunk from anything so hasty, and she would have felt every scruple of mine with multiplied strength and refinement, but I had no choice. The hasty engagement she had entered into with that woman. Here, my dear madam, I was obliged to leave off abruptly to recollect and compose myself. I have been walking over the country, and am now I hope rational enough to make the rest of my letter what it ought to be. It is, in fact, a most mortifying retrospect for me. I behaved shamefully, and here I can admit that my manners to Miss W. in being unpleasant to Miss F. were highly blamable. She disapproved them, which ought to have been enough. My plea of concealing the truth she did not think sufficient. She was displeased, I thought unreasonably so. I thought her on a thousand occasions unnecessarily scrupulous and cautious. I thought her even cold. But she was always right. If I had followed her judgment and subdued my spirits to the level of what she deemed proper, I should have escaped the greatest unhappiness I have ever known. We quarreled. Do you remember the morning spent at Donwell? There, every little dissatisfaction that had occurred before came to a crisis. I was late. I met her walking home by herself and wanted to walk with her, but she would not suffer it. She absolutely refused to allow me, which I then thought most unreasonable. Now, however, I see nothing in it but a very natural and consistent degree of discretion. While I, to blind the world to our engagement, was behaving one hour with objectionable particularity to another woman, was she to be consenting the next to a proposal which might have made every previous caution useless? Had we been met walking together between Donwell and Highbury, the truth must have been suspected. I was mad enough, however, to resent it. I doubted her affection. I doubted it more the next day on Box Hill when provoked by such conduct on my side such shameful insolent neglect of her and such apparent devotion to Miss W. as would have been impossible for any woman of sense to endure, she spoke her resentment in a form of words perfectly intelligible to me. In short, my dear madam, it was a quarrel blameless on her side, abominable on mine, and I returned the same evening to Richmond, though I might have stayed with you till the next morning, merely because I would be as angry with her as possible. Even then I was not such a fool as not to mean to be reconciled in time, but I was the injured person, injured by her coldness, and I went away determined that she should make the first advances. I shall always congratulate myself that you were not of the Box Hill party. Had you witnessed my behavior there, I can hardly suppose you would ever have thought well of me again. Its effect upon her appears in the immediate resolution it produced. As soon as she found that I was really gone from Randalls, she closed with the offer of that officious Mrs. Elton, the whole system of whose treatment of her, by the by, has ever filled me with indignation and hatred. I must not quarrel with the spirit of forbearance which has been so richly extended towards myself, but otherwise I should loudly protest against the share of it which that woman has known. Jane, indeed, you will observe that I have not even yet indulged myself in calling her by that name, to you. Think, then, what I must have endured in hearing it bandied between the Eltons with all the vulgarity of needless repetition and all the insolence of imagined superiority. Have patience with me, I shall soon have done. She closed with this offer, resolving to break with me entirely. She wrote the next day to tell me that we were never to meet again. She felt the engagement to be a source of repentance and misery to each, and she dissolved it. This letter reached me on the very morning of my poor aunt's death. I answered it within an hour but from the confusion of my mind and the multiplicity of business falling on me at once. My answer, instead of being sent with all the many other letters of that day, was locked up in my writing desk, and I, trusting that I had written enough, though but a few lines to satisfy her, remained without any uneasiness. I was rather disappointed that I did not hear from her again speedily, but I made excuses for her, and was too busy and, may I add, too cheerful in my views to be capsious. We were moved to Windsor, and two days afterwards I received a parcel from her, my own letters all returned, and a few lines at the same time by the post, stating her extreme surprise at not having had the smallest reply to her last, and adding that as silence on such a point could not be misconstrued, and as it must be equally desirable to both to have every subordinate arrangement concluded as soon as possible, she now sent me, by a safe conveyance, all my letters, and requested that if I could not directly command hers so as to send them to Highbury within a week, I would forward them after that period to her at—in short, the full direction to Mr. Smallridge's near Bristol stared me in the face. I knew the name, the place, I knew all about it, and instantly saw what she had been doing. It was perfectly accordant with that resolution of character which I knew her to possess, and the secrecy she had maintained, as to any such design in her former letter, was equally descriptive of its anxious delicacy. For the world would not she have seemed to threaten me. Imagine the shock! Imagine how, till I had actually detected my own blunder, I raved at the blunders of the post. What was to be done? One thing only. I must speak to my uncle. Without his sanction I could not hope to be listened to again. I spoke. Circumstances were in my favour. The late event had softened away his pride, and he was earlier than I could have anticipated wholly reconciled and complying, and could say at last poor man with a deep sigh that he wished I might find as much happiness in the marriage-state as he had done. I felt that it would be of a different sort. Are you disposed to pity me for what I must have suffered in opening the cause to him, for my suspense while all was at stake? No, do not pity me till I reach Tibery, and saw how ill I had made her. Do not pity me till I saw her go on, sick looks. I reached Tibery at the time of day when, from my knowledge of their late breakfast-hour, I was certain of a good chance of finding her alone. I was not disappointed, and at last I was not disappointed, either in the object of my journey. A great deal of very reasonable, very just displeasure I had to persuade away. But it is done. We are reconciled, dearer, much dearer than ever, and no moments and easiness can ever occur between us again. Now, my dear madam, I will release you, but I could not conclude before. A thousand and a thousand thanks for all the kindness you have ever shown me, and ten thousand for the attentions your heart will dictate towards her. If you think me in a way to be happier than I deserve, I am quite of your opinion. Miss W. calls me the child of good fortune. I hope she is right. In one respect, my good fortune is undoubted, that of being able to subscribe myself, your obliged and affectionate son, F. C. Weston Churchill. This letter must make its way to Emma's feelings. She was obliged, in spite of her previous determination to the contrary, to do it all the justice that Mrs. Weston foretold. As soon as she came to her own name it was irresistible. Every line relating to herself was interesting, and almost every line agreeable, and when this charm ceased the subject could still maintain itself by the natural return of her former regard for the writer and the very strong attraction which any picture of love must have for her at that moment. She never stopped till she had gone through the whole, and though it was impossible not to feel that he had been wrong, but he had been less wrong than she had supposed. And he had suffered, and was very sorry, and he was so grateful to Mrs. Weston, and so much in love with Miss Fairfax, and she was so happy herself, that there was no being severe, and could he have entered the room she must have shaken hands with him as heartily as ever. She thought so well of the letter that when Mr. Knightley came again she desired him to read it. She was sure of Mrs. Weston's wishing it to be communicated, especially to one who, like Mr. Knightley, had seen so much to blame in his conduct. I shall be very glad to look it over, said he, but it seems long. I will take it home with me at night. But that would not do. Mr. Weston was to call in the evening, and she must return it by him. I would rather be talking to you, he replied, but as it seems a matter of justice it shall be done. He began, stopping, however, almost directly to say, had I been offered the sight of one of this gentleman's letters to his mother-in-law a few months ago, Emma, it would not have been taken with such indifference. He proceeded a little farther, reading to himself, and then with a smile observed, a fine complementary opening, but it is his way. One man's style must not be the rule of another's. We will not be severe. It will be natural for me, he added shortly afterwards, to speak my opinion aloud as I read. By doing it I shall feel that I am near you. It will not be so great a loss of time, but if you dislike it, not at all, I should wish it. Mr. Knightley returned to his reading with greater alacrity. He trifles here, said he, as to the temptation. He knows he is wrong and has nothing rational to urge. Bad! He ought not to inform the engagement. His father's disposition—he is unjust, however, to his father. Mr. Weston's sanguine temper was a blessing on all his upright and honourable exertions. But Mr. Weston earned every present comfort before he endeavored to gain it. Very true, he did not come till Miss Fairfax was here. And I have not forgotten, said Emma, how sure you were that he might have come sooner if he would. You pass it over very handsomely, but you were perfectly right. I was not quite impartial in my judgment, Emma, but yet I think, had you not been in the case, I should still have distrusted him. When he came to Miss Woodhouse he was obliged to read the whole of it aloud. All that related to her, with a smile, a look, a shake of the head, a word or two of assent or disapprobation or merely of love, as the subject required, concluding, however, seriously, and after a steady reflection, thus. Very bad, though it might have been worse, playing a most dangerous game, too much indebted to the event for his acquittal, no judge of his own manners by you, always deceived in fact by his own wishes, and regardless of little besides his own convenience, seeing you to have fathomed his secret, natural enough, his own mind full of intrigue that he should suspected in others. Mystery, finesse, how they pervert the understanding. My Emma does not everything serve to prove more and more the beauty of truth and sincerity in all our dealings with each other. Emma agreed to it and with a blush of sensibility on Harriet's account, which she could not give any sincere explanation of. You had better go on, said she. He did so, but very soon stopped again to say, the pianoforte. Ah, that was the act of a very, very young man, one too young to consider whether the inconvenience of it might not very much exceed the pleasure. A boyish scheme, indeed. I cannot comprehend a man's wishing to give a woman any proof of affection which he knows she would rather dispense with, and he did know that she would have prevented the instruments coming if she could. After this he made some progress without any pause. Frank Churchill's confession of having behaved shamefully was the first thing to call for more than a word in passing. I perfectly agree with you, sir, was then his remark. You did behave very shamefully. You never wrote a truer line. And having gone through what immediately followed of the basis of their disagreement and his persisting to act in direct opposition to Jane Fairfax's sense of right, he made a fuller pause to say, this is very bad. He had induced her to place herself for his sake in a situation of extreme difficulty and uneasiness, and it should have been his first object to prevent her from suffering unnecessarily. She must have had much more to contend with in carrying on the correspondence than he could. He should have respected even unreasonable scruples, had there been such, but hers were all reasonable. We must look to her one fault and remember that she had done a wrong thing in consenting to the engagement, to bear that she should have been in a state of punishment. Emma knew that he was now getting to the Box Hill Party and grew uncomfortable. Her own behaviour had been so very improper. She was deeply ashamed and a little afraid of his next look. It was all red, however, steadily, attentively, and without the smallest remark, and accepting one momentary glance at her instantly withdrawn in the fear of giving pain, no remembrance of Box Hill seemed to exist. There is no saying much for the delicacy of our good friends, the Eltens, was his next observation. His feelings are natural. What, actually resolved to break with him entirely? She felt the engagement to be a source of repentance and misery to both. She dissolved it. What of you this gives of her sense of his behaviour? Well, he must be a most extraordinary, nay, nay, read on. You will find how very much he suffers. I hope he does, replied Mr. Knightley Cooley, and resuming the letter. Smallridge, what does this mean? What is all this? She had engaged to go as governess to Mrs. Smallridge's children, a dear friend of Mrs. Elton's, a neighbour of Maple Grove, and by the by I wonder how Mrs. Elton bears the disappointment. Say nothing, my dear Emma, while you oblige me to read, not even if Mrs. Elton. Only one page more. I shall soon have done. What a letter the man writes. I wish you would read it with kinder spirit towards him. Well, there is feeling here. He does seem to have suffered in finding her ill. Only I can have no doubt of his being fond of her. Deer, much dearer than ever. I hope he may long continue to feel all the value of such a reconciliation. He is a very liberal thanker, with his thousands and tens of thousands. Happier than I deserve. Come, he knows himself there. Miss Woodhouse calls me the child of good fortune. Those were Miss Woodhouse's words, were they? And a fine ending. And there is the letter. The child of good fortune. That was your name for him, was it? You do not appear to be so well-satisfied with his letters I am. But still you must, at least. I hope you must. Think the better of him for it. I hope it does him some service with you. Yes, certainly it does. He has had great faults, faults of inconsideration and thoughtlessness. And I am very much in his opinion in thinking him likely to be happier than he deserves. But still, as he is, beyond a doubt, really attached to Miss Fairfax, and will soon it may be hoped, have the advantage of being constantly with her, I am very ready to believe his character will improve, and acquire, from hers, the steadiness and delicacy of principle that it wants. And now let me talk to you of something else. I have another person's interest at present so much at heart, that I cannot think any longer about Frank Churchill. Ever since I left you this morning, Emma, my mind has been hard at work on one subject. The subject followed. It was, in plain, unaffected, women like English, such as Mr. Knightley used even to the woman he was in love with, how to be able to ask her to marry him without attacking the happiness of her father. Emma's answer was ready at the first word. While her father lived, any change of condition must be impossible for her. She could never quit him. Part only of the sanser, however, was admitted. The impossibility of her quitting her father, Mr. Knightley felt as strongly as herself, but the inadmissibility of any other change he could not agree to. He had been thinking and over most deeply, most intently, he had at first hoped to induce Mr. Woodhouse to remove with her to Donwell. He had wanted to believe it feasible, but his knowledge of Mr. Woodhouse would not suffer him to deceive himself long. And now he confessed his persuasion that such a transplantation would be a risk of her father's comfort, perhaps even of his life, which must not be hazarded. Mr. Woodhouse, taken from Hartfield, know he felt that it ought not to be attempted. But the plan which had arisen on the sacrifice of this he trusted his dearest Emma would not find in any respect objectionable. It was that he should be received at Hartfield, so long as her father's happiness, in other words, his life, required Hartfield to continue her home, it should be his likewise. Of their all removing to Donwell, Emma had already her own passing thoughts. Like him she had tried the scheme and rejected it, but such an alternative as this had not occurred to her. She was sensible of all the affection it evinced. She felt that in quitting Donwell he must be sacrificing a great deal of independence, of ours and habits, that in living constantly with her father and in no house of his own there would be much, very much to be born with. She promised to think of it and advised him to think of it more, but he was fully convinced that no reflection could alter his wishes or his opinion on the subject. He had given it, he could assure her, very long and calm consideration. He had been walking away from William Larkin's the whole morning to have his thoughts to himself. Ah, there is one difficulty unprovided for it cried Emma. I am sure William Larkin's will not like it. You must get his consent before you ask mine. She promised, however, to think of it, and pretty nearly promised moreover to think of it, with the intention of finding it a very good scheme. It is remarkable that Emma, in the many, very many points of view in which she was now beginning to consider Donwell Abbey, was never struck with any sense of injury to her nephew Henry, whose rights as air-expectant had formerly been so tenaciously regarded. Think she must of the possible difference to the poor little boy, and yet she only gave herself a saucy, conscious smile about it, and found amusement in detecting the real cause of that violent dislike of Mr. Knightley's marrying Jane Fairfax or anybody else, which at the time she had wholly imputed to the amiable solicitude of the sister and the aunt. This proposal of his, this plan of marrying and continuing at Hartfield, the more she contemplated it, the more pleasing it became. His evil seemed to lessen, her own advantages to increase, their mutual good to outweigh every drawback. Such a companion for herself in the periods of anxiety and cheerlessness before her. Such a partner in all those duties and cares to which time must be giving increase of melancholy. She would have been too happy, but for poor Harriet, but every blessing of her own seemed to involve and advance the sufferings of her friend, who must now be even excluded from Hartfield. The delightful family party which Emma was securing for herself, poor Harriet must, in mere charitable caution, be kept at a distance from. She would be a loser in every way. Emma could not deplore her future absence as any deduction from her own enjoyment. In such a party Harriet would be rather a dead weight than otherwise, but for the poor girl herself it seemed a peculiarly cruel necessity that was to be placing her in such a state of unmerited punishment. In time, of course, Mr. Knightley would be forgotten, that is, supplanted, but this could not be expected to happen very early. Mr. Knightley himself would be doing nothing to assist the cure, not like Mr. Elton. Mr. Knightley, always so kind, so feeling, so truly considerate for everybody, would never deserve to be less worshipped than now, and it really was too much to hope, even of Harriet, that she could be in love with more than three men in one year. End of Volume 3, Chapter 15, read by Cibella Denton. For more information please visit LibriVox.org. Volume 3, Chapter 16 of Emma by Jane Austen. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. It was a very great relief to Emma to find Harriet as desirous as herself to avoid a meeting. Their intercourse was painful enough by letter. How much worse had they been obliged to meet? Harriet expressed herself very much as might be supposed, without reproaches or apparent sense of ill usage, and yet Emma fancied there was a something of resentment, a something bordering on it in her style, which increased the desirableness of their being separate. It might be only her own consciousness, but it seemed as if an angel only could have been quite without resentment under such a stroke. She had no difficulty in procuring Isabella's invitation, and she was fortunate in having a sufficient reason for asking it, without resorting to invention. There was a toothamess. Harriet really wished and had wished some time to consult a dentist. Mrs. John Knightley was delighted to be abused. Anything of ill health was a recommendation to her, and though not so fond of a dentist as of a Mr. Wingfield, she was quite eager to have Harriet under her care. When it was thus settled on her sister's side, Emma proposed it to her friend, and found her very persuadable. Harriet was to go. She was invited for at least a fortnight. She was to be conveyed in Mr. Woodhouse's carriage. It was all arranged, it was all completed, and Harriet was safe in Brunswick Square. Now Emma could indeed enjoy Mr. Knightley's visits. Now she could talk, and she could listen with true happiness, unchecked by that sense of injustice, of guilt, of something most painful which had haunted her when remembering how disappointed a heart was near her, how much might be at that moment, and at a little distance be endured by the feelings which she had led astray herself. The difference of Harriet at Mrs. Goddard's, or in London, made perhaps an unreasonable difference in Emma's sensations, but she could not think of her in London without objects of curiosity and employment, which must be averting the past and carrying her out of herself. She would not allow any other anxiety to succeed directly to the place in her mind which Harriet had occupied. There was a communication before her, one which she only could be competent to make, the confession of her engagement to her father, but she would have nothing to do with it at present. She had resolved to defer the disclosure till Mrs. Weston were safe and well. No additional agitation should be thrown at this period among those she loved, and the evil should not act on herself by anticipation before the appointed time. A fortnight at least of leisure and peace of mind, to crown every warmer but more agitated delight, should be hers. She soon resolved, equally as a duty and a pleasure, to employ half an hour of this holiday of spirits in calling on Miss Fairfax. She ought to go, and she was longing to see her, the resemblance of their present situations increasing every other motive of good will. It would be a secret satisfaction, but the consciousness of a similarity of prospect would certainly add to the interest with which she should attend to anything Jane might communicate. She went, she had driven once unsuccessfully to the door, but had not been into the house since the morning after-box hill, when poor Jane had been in such distress as had filled her with compassion, though all the worst of her sufferings had been unsuspected. The fear of being still unwelcome determined her, though assured of their being at home, to wait in the passage and send up her name. She heard Patti announcing it, but no such bustle succeeded as poor Miss Bates had before made so happily intelligible. No, she heard nothing but the instant reply of, Beg her to walk up. In a moment afterwards she was met on the stairs by Jane herself, coming eagerly forward as if no other reception of her were felt sufficient. Emma had never seen her look so well, so lovely, so engaging. There was consciousness, animation and warmth. There was everything which her countness or manner could have ever wanted. She came forward with an offered hand and said in a low but very feeling tone, This is most kind indeed. Miss Woodhouse, it is impossible for me to express. I hope you will believe. Excuse me for being so entirely without words. Emma was gratified and would have shown no want of words if the sound of Mrs. Elton's voice from the sitting-room had not checked her, and made it expedient to compress all her friendly and all her congratulatory sensations into a very, very earnest shake of the hand. Mrs. Bates and Mrs. Elton were together. Miss Bates was out, which accounted for the previous tranquility. Emma could have wished Mrs. Elton elsewhere, but she was in a humor to have patience with everybody. And as Mrs. Elton met her with unusual graciousness, she hoped there were contra would do them no harm. She soon believed herself to penetrate Mrs. Elton's thoughts, and understand why she was like herself in happy spirits. It was being in Miss Fairfax's confidence and fancying herself acquainted with what was still a secret to other people. Emma saw symptoms of it immediately in the expression of her face, and while paying her own compliments to Mrs. Bates, and appearing to attend to the good old lady's replies, she saw her with a sort of anxious parade of mystery fold up a letter which she had apparently been reading aloud to Miss Fairfax, and returned it into the purple and gold reticule by her side, saying with significant nods, We can finish this some other time, you know. You and I shall not want opportunities. And, in fact, you have heard all the essential already. I only wanted to prove to you that Mrs. S admits our apology and is not offended. You see how delightfully she writes. Oh, she is a sweet creature. You would have doted on her had you gone. But not a word more. Let us be discreet, quite on our good behavior. Hush, you remember those lines. I forget the poem at this moment. For when a lady's in the case, you know all other things give place. Now I say, my dear, in our case, for Lady, read, Mum, a word to the wise, I am in a fine flow of spirit and sound-eye. But I want to set your heart at ease as to Mrs. S. My representation, you see, has quite appeased her. And again, on Emma's merely turning her head to look at Mrs. Bates's knitting, she added, in a half whisper, I mentioned no names you will observe. Oh, no, cautious as a minister of state. I managed it extremely well. Emma could not doubt it was a palpable display, repeated on every possible occasion. When they had all talked a little while in harmony of the weather and Mrs. Weston, she found herself abruptly addressed with, Do not you think, Miss Woodhouse, our saucy little friend here is charmingly recovered? Do not you think her cure does parry the highest credit? Here was a side-long glance of great meaning at Jane. Upon my word, parry has restored her in a wonderfully short time. Oh, if you had seen her, as I did, when she was at the worst! And when Mrs. Bates was saying something to Emma, whispered farther, we do not say a word of any assistance that parry might have, not a word of a certain young physician from Windsor. Oh, no, parry shall have all the credit. I have scarce had the pleasure of seeing you, Miss Woodhouse, she sortly afterwards began, since the party to Box Hill. Very pleasant party. But yet I think there was something wanting. Things did not seem, that is, there seemed a little cloud upon the spirits of some. So it appeared to me, at least, but I might be mistaken. However, I think it answered so far as to attempt one to go again. What say you both to our collecting the same party and exploring to Box Hill again while the fine weather lasts? It must be the same party, you know, quite the same party. Not one exception. Soon after this Miss Bates came in, and Emma could not help being diverted by the perplexity of her first answer to herself, resulting, she supposed, from doubt of what might be said, and impatience to say everything. Thank you, dear Miss Woodhouse, you are all kindness. It is impossible to say. Yes, indeed, I quite understand. Dearest Jane's prospects, that is, I do not mean, but she is charmingly recovered. How is Mr. Woodhouse? I am so glad, quite out of my power. Such a happy little circle as you find us here. Yes, indeed, charming young man. That is, so very friendly. I mean, good Mr. Perry. Such attention to Jane. And from her great, more than commonly thankful delight towards Mrs. Elton for being there, Emma guessed that there had been a little show of resentment towards Jane from the vicarage quarter, which was now graciously overcome. After a few whispers, indeed, which placed it beyond a guess, Mrs. Elton, speaking louder, said, Yes, here I am, my good friend, and here have I been so long that anywhere else I should think it necessary to apologize. But the truth is that I am waiting for my lord and master. He promised to join me here and pay his respects to you. What, are we to have the pleasure of a call for Mr. Elton? That will be a favour, indeed, for I know gentlemen do not like morning visits, and Mr. Elton's time is so engaged. Upon my word it is, Miss Bates. He really is engaged for morning to-night. There is no end of people's coming to him on some pretense or other. The magistrates, and overseers, and church wardens are always wanting his opinion. They seem not able to do anything without him. Upon my word, Mr. E., I often say, rather you than I. I do not know what would become of my crayons and my instrument if I had half so many applicants. Bad enough as it is for I absolutely neglect them both to an unpardonable degree. I believe I have not played a bar this fortnight. However he is coming, I assure you. Yes, indeed, on purpose to wait on you all. And putting up her hand to screen her words from Emma. A congratulatory visit, you know. Oh, yes, quite indispensable. Miss Bates looked about her so happily. He promised to come to me as soon as he could disengage himself from nightly, but he and nightly are shut up together in deep consultation. Mr. E. is nightly's right hand. Emma would not have smiled for the world and only said, Is Mr. Elton gone on foot to Donwell? He will have a hot walk. Oh, no! It is a meeting at the Crown, a regular meeting. Weston and Cole will be there too, but one is apt to speak only of those who lead. I fancy Mr. E. and nightly have everything their own way. Have you not mistaken the day, said Emma? I am almost certain that the meeting at the Crown is not till tomorrow. Mr. Nightly was at Hartfield yesterday and spoke of it as for Saturday. Oh, no! The meeting is certainly to-day, was the abrupt answer, which denoted the impossibility of any blunder on Mrs. Elton's side. I do believe, she continued, this is the most troublesome parish that ever was. We never heard of such things at Maple Grove. Your parish there was small, said Jane. Upon my word, my dear, I do not know, for I never heard the subject talked of. But it is proved by the smallness of the school which I have heard you speak of as under the patronage of your sister and Mrs. Drag. The only school, and not more than five and twenty children. Ah, you clever creature! That's very true! What a thinking brain you have! I say, Jane, what a perfect character you and I should make if we could be shaken together! My liveliness and your solidity would produce perfection. Not that I presume to insinuate, however, that some people may not think you perfection already, but hush! Not a word, if you please. It seemed an unnecessary caution. Jane was wanting to give her words, not to Mrs. Elton, but to Mrs. Woodhouse, as the latter plainly saw. The wish of distinguishing her, as far as civility permitted, was very evident, though it could not often proceed beyond a look. Mr. Elton made his appearance. His lady greeted him with some of her sparkling vivacity. Very pretty, sir, upon my word, to send me on here, to be an encumbrance to my friends, so long before you about safe to come. But you knew what a dutiful creature you had to deal with. You knew I should not stir till my lord and master appeared. Here have I been sitting this hour, giving these young ladies an example of true conjugal obedience, for who can say, you know, how soon it may be wanted? Mr. Elton was so hot and tired that all this wit seemed thrown away. His civilities to the other ladies must be paid, but his subsequent object was to lament over himself for the heat he was suffering and the walk he had had for nothing. When I got to Donwell, said he, nightly could not be found. Very odd, very unaccountable, after the note I sent him this morning, and the message he returned that he should certainly be at home till one. Donwell, cried his wife, my dear Mr. E., you have not been to Donwell. You mean the crown. You come from the meeting at the crown. No, no, that's to-morrow, and I particularly wanted to see nightly today on that very account. Such a dreadful, broiling morning! I went over the fields, too, speaking in a tone of great ill usage, which made it so much the worse. And then not to find him at home. I assure you I am not at all pleased. And no apology left, no message for me. The housekeeper declared she knew nothing of my being expected. Very extraordinary, and nobody knew at all which way he was gone. Perhaps to Hartfield, perhaps to the Abbey Mill, perhaps into his woods. Miss Woodhouse, this is not like our friend nightly. Can you explain it?" Emma amused herself by protesting that it was very extraordinary, indeed, and that she had not a syllable to say for him. I cannot imagine, said Mrs. Elton, feeling the indignity as a wife ought to do. I cannot imagine how he could do such a thing by you, of all the people in the world, the very last person whom one should expect to be forgotten. My dear Mr. E., he must have left a message for you. I am sure he must. Not even nightly could be so very eccentric, and his servants forgot it. Depend upon it, that was the case, and very likely to happen with the Donwell servants, who are all I have often observed extremely awkward and remiss. I am sure I would not have such a creature as his Harry stand at our sideboard for any consideration. And as for Mrs. Hodges, Wright holds her very cheap indeed. She promised right a receipt, and never sent it. I met William Larkin's, continued Mr. Elton, as I got near the house, and he told me I should not find his master at home, but I did not believe him. William seemed rather out of humor. He did not know what was come to his master lately, he said, but he could hardly ever get the speech of him. I have nothing to do with William's wants, but it is really of great importance that I should see nightly to-day, and it becomes a matter, therefore, of very serious inconvenience that I should have had this hot walk to no purpose. Emma felt that she could not do better than to go home directly. In all probability she was at this very time waited for there, and Mr. Nightly might be preserved from sinking deeper in aggression towards Mr. Elton, if not towards William Larkin's. She was pleased on taking leave to find Miss Fairfax determined to attend her out of the room, to go with her even downstairs. It gave her an opportunity which she immediately made use of to say, It is as well, perhaps, that I have not had the possibility. Had you not been surrounded by other friends, I might have been tempted to introduce a subject, to ask questions, to speak more openly than might have been strictly correct. I feel that I should certainly have been impertinent. Oh! cried Jane, with a blush and an hesitation, which Emma thought infinitely more becoming to her than all the elegance of her usual composer. There would have been no danger. The danger would have been of my wearying you. You could not have gratified me more than by expressing an interest. Indeed, Miss Woodhouse, speaking more collectively, with the consciousness which I have of misconduct, very great misconduct, it is particularly consoling to me to know that those of my friends, whose good opinion is most worth preserving, are not disgusted to such a degree as to- I have not time for half that I could wish to say. I long to make apologies, excuses, to urge something for myself. I feel it so very due. But, unfortunately, in short, if your compassion does not stand, my friend. Oh! you are too scrupulous, indeed you are! cried Emma warmly, and taking her hand. You owe me no apologies, and everybody to whom you might be supposed to owe them is so perfectly satisfied, so delighted even. You are very kind, but I know what my manners were to you. So cold and artificial. I had always a part to act. It was a life of deceit. I know that I must have disgusted you. Pray, say no more. I feel that all the apologies should be on my side. Let us forgive each other at once. We must do whatever is to be done quickest, and I think our feelings will lose no time there. I hope you have pleasant accounts from Windsor. Very. And the next news, I suppose, will be that we are to lose you, just as I begin to know you. Oh! as to all that, of course nothing can be thought of yet. I am here till claimed by Colonel and Mrs. Campbell. Nothing can be actually settled yet, perhaps, replied Emma, smiling, but excuse me, it must be thought of. The smile was returned, as Jane answered. You are very right, it has been thought of. And I will own to you, I am sure it will be safe, that so far as our living with Mr. Churchill at Enscombe it has settled. There must be three months at least, of deep mourning, but when they are over, I imagine there will be nothing more to wait for. Thank you, thank you. This is just what I wanted to be assured of. Oh! if you knew how much I love everything that is decided and open. Goodbye, End of Volume 3, Chapter 16, read by Cibella Denton. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org.