“You know Miss Fairfax’s situation in life, I conclude; what she is destined to be?”

“Yes—­(rather hesitatingly)—­I believe I do.”

“You get upon delicate subjects, Emma,” said Mrs. Weston smiling; “remember that I am here.—­Mr. Frank Churchill hardly knows what to say when you speak of Miss Fairfax’s situation in life.  I will move a little farther off.”

“I certainly do forget to think of her,” said Emma, “as having ever been any thing but my friend and my dearest friend.”

He looked as if he fully understood and honoured such a sentiment.

When the gloves were bought, and they had quitted the shop again, “Did you ever hear the young lady we were speaking of, play?” said Frank Churchill.

“Ever hear her!” repeated Emma.  “You forget how much she belongs to Highbury.  I have heard her every year of our lives since we both began.  She plays charmingly.”

“You think so, do you?—­I wanted the opinion of some one who could really judge.  She appeared to me to play well, that is, with considerable taste, but I know nothing of the matter myself.—­ I am excessively fond of music, but without the smallest skill or right of judging of any body’s performance.—­I have been used to hear her’s admired; and I remember one proof of her being thought to play well:—­a man, a very musical man, and in love with another woman—­engaged to her—­on the point of marriage—­ would yet never ask that other woman to sit down to the instrument, if the lady in question could sit down instead—­never seemed to like to hear one if he could hear the other.  That, I thought, in a man of known musical talent, was some proof.”

“Proof indeed!” said Emma, highly amused.—­“Mr. Dixon is very musical, is he?  We shall know more about them all, in half an hour, from you, than Miss Fairfax would have vouchsafed in half a year.”

“Yes, Mr. Dixon and Miss Campbell were the persons; and I thought it a very strong proof.”

“Certainly—­very strong it was; to own the truth, a great deal stronger than, if I had been Miss Campbell, would have been at all agreeable to me.  I could not excuse a man’s having more music than love—­more ear than eye—­a more acute sensibility to fine sounds than to my feelings.  How did Miss Campbell appear to like it?”

“It was her very particular friend, you know.”

“Poor comfort!” said Emma, laughing.  “One would rather have a stranger preferred than one’s very particular friend—­with a stranger it might not recur again—­but the misery of having a very particular friend always at hand, to do every thing better than one does oneself!—­ Poor Mrs. Dixon!  Well, I am glad she is gone to settle in Ireland.”

“You are right.  It was not very flattering to Miss Campbell; but she really did not seem to feel it.”

“So much the better—­or so much the worse:—­I do not know which.  But be it sweetness or be it stupidity in her—­quickness of friendship, or dulness of feeling—­there was one person, I think, who must have felt it:  Miss Fairfax herself.  She must have felt the improper and dangerous distinction.”