Miss Fairfax, who was the orphan daughter of Lieutenant Fairfax, and Miss Janes Bates had for many years been living with her father’s brother-officer, Colonel Campbell, and his wife and daughter.  A beautiful girl of nineteen, with only a few hundred pounds of her own, and no monetary expectations from her adoptive father, she had received such an education as qualified her to become a governess; and though as long as Colonel and Mrs. Campbell lived their home might always be hers, she had all along resolved to start earning her own living at one-and-twenty.  Her friend, Miss Campbell, had recently married a rich and agreeable young man called Dixon; and though the Dixons had urgently invited her to join Colonel and Mrs. Campbell in a visit to them in Ireland, Jane preferred to spend three months’ holiday with her aunt and grandmother at Highbury, with some vague intention of starting her scholastic career at the end of this period.  Emma did not like Jane Fairfax, partly because Jane’s aunt was always boring people by talking of her; partly, perhaps, because—­as Mr. Knightley once told her—­she saw in her the really accomplished young woman which she wanted to be thought herself.  At any rate, she still found her as reserved as ever.  Jane had been a little acquainted with Mr. Frank Churchill at Weymouth, but she either could not, or would not, tell Emma anything about him.

That gentleman, however, soon presented himself in person.  He was the son of Mr. Weston by his first wife.  At the age of three he had been adopted by his maternal uncle, Mr. Churchill; and so avowedly had he been brought up as their heir by Mr. and Mrs. Churchill—­who had no children of their own—­that on his coming of age he had assumed the name of Churchill.  For some months he had been promising to pay a visit to his father and stepmother to compliment them on their marriage; but on the pretext of his not being able to leave Enscombe, his uncle’s place, it had been repeatedly postponed.

Emma was inclined to make allowances for him as a young man dependent on the caprices of relations.  But Mr. Knightley condemned his conduct roundly.  “He cannot want money, he cannot want leisure,” he said.  “We know, on the contrary, that he has so much of both that he is glad to get rid of them at the idlest haunts in the kingdom.”  Notwithstanding, when he did arrive, Frank Churchill carried all before him by reason of his good looks, sprightliness, and amiability.  Emma and he soon became great friends.  He favoured an idea of hers, that Jane’s refusal to go to the Dixons’ in Ireland was due either to Mr. Dixon’s attachment to her, or to her attachment to Mr. Dixon.  When a Broadwood pianoforte arrived for Jane—­which was generally taken to be a gift from Colonel Campbell—­he agreed with her in thinking that this was another occurrence for which Mr. Dixon’s love was responsible; and he was busily engaged in planning out the details of a projected ball at the Crown Inn when a letter from Mr. Churchill urging his instant departure compelled him to make a hurried return to Enscombe.