“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 due; had she tried to know her better; had she done her part towards intimacy; had she endeavoured 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 so foolishly fashioned and harboured 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 of 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 tete-a-tete, 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 forebodings she feared would experience no similar contradiction.  The prospect before her now, was threatening to a degree that could not be entirely dispelled—­ that might not be even 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.