Austen Said:

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 —"

"He trifles here,"

"as to the temptation. He knows he is wrong, and has nothing rational to urge.—Bad.—He ought not to have formed 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 endeavoured to gain it.—Very true; he did not come till Miss Fairfax was here."

"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."

"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.—Fancying you to have fathomed his secret. Natural enough!—his own mind full of intrigue, that he should suspect it in others.—Mystery; Finesse —how they pervert the understanding! My Emma, does not every thing serve to prove more and more the beauty of truth and sincerity in all our dealings with each other?"

"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 instrument's coming if she could."

"I perfectly agree with you, sir,"—

"You did behave very shamefully. You never wrote a truer line."

"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 such a state of punishment."

"There is no saying much for the delicacy of our good friends, the Eltons,"

"His feelings are natural.—What! actually resolve to break with him entirely!—

She felt

What view this gives of her sense of his behaviour!—Well, he must be a most extraordinary —"

"I hope he does,"

"'Smallridge!'—What does this mean? What is all this?"

"Say nothing, my dear Emma, while you oblige me to read —not even of Mrs. Elton. Only one page more. I shall soon have done. What a letter the man writes!"

"Well, there is feeling here.—He does seem to have suffered in finding her ill.—Certainly, I can have no doubt of his being fond of her.

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.—

Come, he knows himself there.

That was your name for him, was it?"

"Yes, certainly it does. He has had great faults, faults of inconsideration and thoughtlessness; and I am very much of 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."

"That is,"

"she will indulge her even more than she did you, and believe that she does not indulge her at all. It will be the only difference."

"Nothing very bad.—The fate of thousands. She will be disagreeable in infancy, and correct herself as she grows older. I am losing all my bitterness against spoilt children, my dearest Emma. I, who am owing all my happiness to you, would not it be horrible ingratitude in me to be severe on them?"

"Do you?—I have no doubt. Nature gave you understanding:—Miss Taylor gave you principles. You must have done well. My interference was quite as likely to do harm as good. It was very natural for you to say, what right has he to lecture me?—and I am afraid very natural for you to feel that it was done in a disagreeable manner. I do not believe I did you any good. The good was all to myself, by making you an object of the tenderest affection to me. I could not think about you so much without doating on you, faults and all; and by dint of fancying so many errors, have been in love with you ever since you were thirteen at least."

"How often, when you were a girl, have you said to me, with one of your saucy looks—

something which, you knew, I did not approve. In such cases my interference was giving you two bad feelings instead of one."

"

You always called me,

and, from habit, it has not so very formal a sound.—And yet it is formal. I want you to call me something else, but I do not know what."

"And cannot you call me 'George' now?"

"John does not even mention your friend,"

"Here is his answer, if you like to see it."

"John enters like a brother into my happiness,"

"but he is no complimenter; and though I well know him to have, likewise, a most brotherly affection for you, he is so far from making flourishes, that any other young woman might think him rather cool in her praise. But I am not afraid of your seeing what he writes."

"My Emma, he means no such thing. He only means — —"

"Emma, my dear Emma—"

"Ah!"

"I wish your father might be half as easily convinced as John will be, of our having every right that equal worth can give, to be happy together. I am amused by one part of John's letter— — did you notice it?—where he says, that my information did not take him wholly by surprize, that he was rather in expectation of hearing something of the kind."

"Yes, yes—but I am amused that he should have seen so far into my feelings. What has he been judging by?—I am not conscious of any difference in my spirits or conversation that could prepare him at this time for my marrying any more than at another.—But it was so, I suppose. I dare say there was a difference when I was staying with them the other day. I believe I did not play with the children quite so much as usual. I remember one evening the poor boys saying, 'Uncle seems always tired now.'"

"I have something to tell you, Emma; some news."

"I do not know which it ought to be called."

"I am afraid,"

"I am very much afraid, my dear Emma, that you will not smile when you hear it."

"There is one subject,"

"I hope but one, on which we do not think alike."

"Does nothing occur to you?—Do not you recollect?—Harriet Smith."

"Have you heard from her yourself this morning?"

"You have, I believe, and know the whole."

"You are prepared for the worst, I see— and very bad it is. Harriet Smith marries Robert Martin."