Emma, chapters 46-48

Ten days after the end of the previous chapter—which brought with it the news that Frank Churchill’s aunt had finally met the grim reaper (and probably scared him into an early retirement)—Mr. Weston shows up at Hartfield in a full-on spaz attack. He’s been sent to fetch Emma to Randalls, to see his wife on urgent, urgent business, really just the urgentest. Emma demands to know what exactly is going on, undoubtedly worried that Mrs. Weston’s hair may be on fire or something.
“Is she unwell?”
“No, no, not at all—only a little agitated. She would have ordered the carriage, and come to you, but she must see you alone, and that you know (nodding towards her father)—Humph! Can you come?”
Well, okay. We get that. The concepts “Mr. Woodhouse” and “urgent” cannot exist in the same room. The time-space continuum would warp out of shape or something. Anyway, Emma says of course she can come, and as she pulls on a pair of wellies and looks around for her house keys, she begs Mr. Weston to come on, just be a guy and tell her. And he’s all, “You will know it all in time. The most unaccountable business! But hush, hush!”
She tries again when they’re on the path from the house, tearing through the gates like a pack of raptors is on their tail. “Don’t ask me,” he says. “I promised my wife to leave it all to her. She will break it to you better than I can.” So, pretty much, for this one page alone, Mr. Weston has earned a slow death by spit-roasting.
Make that two pages, because Emma keeps on trying all the way to Randalls. But the only concession she gets from him is that maybe the phrase “break it to you” wasn’t the best choice of words. “I don’t say that it is not a disagreeable business, but things might be much worse. If we walk fast, we shall soon be at Randalls.” And if they pass a large hole, we shall see Emma push him into it.
Of course, not knowing the score just makes Emma’s imagination jump the shark. She imagines that maybe Frank is disinherited; possibly Mr. Churchill has “a dozen natural children,” which doesn’t really tally with what we know of him. If anyone had the verve for serial adultery in that marriage, it was the Mrs.—though her natural children would probably all be sired by the lord of hell, and as such have little interest in inheriting some meager acreage in England.
Finally they arrive—I picture Mr. Weston physically yanking Emma into the house, her hair pulled out of curl and possibly her bonnet lost to the wind some half a mile back—and she’s delivered into the room where Mrs. Weston sits waiting like the empress of Russia. And before Mr. Weston leaves, Emma hears him stage-whisper, “I have been as good as my word. She has not the least idea.” Workin’ it right to the end, there, Big W. We may need a goddamn hook to get you offstage.
This kind of suspense would have killed Harriet Smith stone dead about seven paragraphs back. Fortunately, Emma is made of sterner stuff. Which is a good thing, because when she asks Mrs. Weston to please now spill the bloody beans already, that lady manages to outdo even her husband by—are you ready for it?—asking Emma to guess. Seriously, they’re a pair of torturers. (I’m betting there’s a big suitcase under their marital bed filled with S&M gear. Whips, handcuffs, tit clamps. And Regency gimp masks with totally amazingneedlework.)
Emma, who’s recently learned the hard way to be always polite even if it freakin’ gives her the bends, plays along and ventures that it has something to do with Frank Churchill. Ding-ding-ding. Got it in one. “You are right,” says Mrs. Weston. “It does relate to him, and I will tell you directly”. Don’t you love people who say “I will tell you directly,” instead of—you know—telling you directly?
Then there’s a lovely moment as Mrs. Weston pauses, “resuming her work, and seeming resolved against looking up.” One of those illuminating character details that so vividly differentiate Austen from her imitators. Finally, stitching frantically away, she lets it out.
“He came to speak to his father on a subject,—to announce an attachment—”
She stopped to breathe. Emma thought first of herself, then of Harriet.
“More than an attachment, indeed,” resumed Mrs. Weston: “an engagement—a positive engagement. What will you say, Emma—what will any body say—when it is known that Frank Churchill and Miss Fairfax are engaged; nay, that they have been long engaged?”
What will Emma say?—Well, a variety of things, ranging somewhere between “Shut up,” and (twisting Mrs. Weston’s arm behind her, no doubt) “Take it back!”
But in fact it’s all true. “There has been a solemn engagement between them since October,” Mrs. Weston says (though how solemn it can be is arguable given the way Frank’s been disporting himself like Hugh Hefner on shore leave), “formed at Weymouth, and kept a secret from everybody…I can hardly believe it. I thought I knew him.”
Emma now finds herself in an extremely unenviable position, which many of us have encountered as well (I know I have). She suddenly realizes that Jane Fairfax is sure to have heard every single snarky thing she ever said about her, thanks to Frank blabbing it all in intimate moments. But give her credit: she’s just as concerned by what this news must mean to Harriet. Another romantic disappointment, so soon on the heels of Elton-gate! The poor kid will probably fling herself off a cliff. (Presuming Miss Woodhouse thinks it a good idea. I mean, Harriet’s bound to ask first.)
Thinking about romantic disappointment, Emma has another epiphany, and realizes exactly why she was bundled off to Randalls in such haste and secrecy. The Westons are afraid that she’s the one who’s going to fling herself from a cliff. Or the Emma equivalent thereof, which would be more like going on a tear of angry sarcasm so lethal, the whole of Highbury would go up in one big whoompf. So she immediately puts Mrs. Weston’s mind at rest, reassuring her that it’s been a loooong time since she had any designs on the contents of Frank Churchill’s well-tailored breeches.
Mrs. Weston is so relieved, she jumps up and kisses Emma. It’s the first kiss in the entire novel, and we’re on page 378. It’s probably the last kiss we’ll get, too. We have Hollywood to blame for larding Austen’s narratives with quivering lips, moist, yearning eyes, and furtive embraces, thus earning her the reputation of queen of turgid period romance. If Austen were alive today and making movies, she’d more Whit Stillman than Merchant & Ivory. (Hell, she’d be more more Judd Apatow than Merchant & Ivory.)
Anyway, while Emma’s happy to give Mrs. Weston peace of mind, she’s far less ready to let Frank off the hook. Oh hell, no. The man’s used her, and she’s just the kind of girl to repay use with abuse.
“What right had he to endeavor to please, as he certainly did—to distinguish any one young woman with persevering attention, as he certainly did, while he really belonged to another? How could he tell what mischief he might be doing?—How could he tell that he might not be making me in love with him? Very wrong, very wrong indeed.”
Mrs. Weston tries to get a word in edgewise, but unsuccessfully because Excuse me not finished yet.
“And how could she bear such behaviour? Composure with a witness! to look on, while repeated attentions were offered to another woman before her face, and not resent it. That is a degree of placidity, which I can neither comprehend nor respect.”
Mrs. Weston breaks in to make it clear that Jane didresent it. And in fact there’s been a lot of friction and frustration between the two lovers over the past few months, which most of us have already twigged to. But of course Emma has to have it all written down for her in a bound volume, then the volume thwacked upside her head.
Mrs. Weston now confesses that the troubles between Frank and Jane was so severe that “The present crisis, indeed, seemed to be brought on by them; and those misunderstandings might very possibly arise from the impropriety of his conduct.” Emma bridles at that word, “impropriety”—in her opinion, you might just as well call Napoleon “pushy.”
“Impropriety! Oh! Mrs. Weston, it is too calm a censure. Much, much beyond impropriety! It has sunk him—I cannot say how it has sunk him in my opinion. So unlike what a man should be! None of that upright integrity, that strict adherence to truth and principle, that disdain of trick and littleness, which a man should display in every transaction of his life.”
And yet, thick-headed as ever, it doesn’t occur to her exactly who she’s describing here. She’s too busy ticking off new horrors. Such as poor Mrs. Smallridge—the woman who’s probably right now fitting out Jane’s room for for her arrival to take up her governess duties. Sorry, Mrs. Smallridge. Maybe you can repurpose that room into a zumba studio.
In fact, Mrs. Weston reveals, it was Jane’s acceptance of the job with Mrs. Smallridge—a decision she made privately, without telling Frank—that blew the lid off this clandestine can of worms. Frank’s discovery of it convinced him to go public at last, and do right by his woman before she hired herself out as a future Charlotte Brontë heroine. Frank has promised to write with even more extenuating explanations (I’ll just bet he has), and Mrs. Weston begs Emma to wait for his letter before trashing his name around town, or burning him in effigy on the village green. “Let us have patience. I must love him…I am sincerely anxious for its all turning out well, and ready to hope that it may. They must both have suffered a great deal under such a system of secrecy and concealment.”
Emma remarks that if so, he did a hell of a lot better job hiding it than she did. But never mind, she’ll agree not to rush to judgment; though she then delivers a line almost worthy of Mrs. Bennet: “I suppose we shall gradually grow reconciled to the idea, and I wish them very happy. But I shall always think it a very abominable sort of proceeding.” And then she manages—through a positively gymnastic feat of reasoning—to absolve herself of any guilt over the snide comments she made about Jane to Frank.
“Here have we been the whole winter and spring completely duped, fancying ourselves all on an equal footing of truth and honour, with two people in the midst of us who may have been carrying round, comparing and sitting in judgment on sentiments and words that were never meant for both to hear.—They must take the consequence, if they have heard each other spoken of in a way not perfectly agreeable.”
In other words, “If my rudeness hurt their feelings, it’s their fault.” She’s good at the ass-covering, our homegirl. Too bad Mrs. Weston spoils it by pointing out that her ass needs no covering of any kind, and oh yeah, snap.
Now, “Mr. Weston appeared at a little distance from the window, evidently on the watch.” Beautiful comic image. You have to wonder what he was expecting to find. Maybe Emma bashing up all his furniture, or both women on all fours, baying at the ceiling. At any rate, his wife gives him the all-clear and he gratefully zips back ‘round to the front of the house. While he’s en route, his wife begs Emma to go easy on the Frank-hating routine, for his sake, and to make him feel good about the match.
“It is not a connection to gratify; but if Mr. Churchill does not feel that, why should we? and it may be a very fortunate circumstance for him,—for Frank, I mean,—that he should have attached himself to a girl of such steadiness of character and good judgment as I have always given her credit for—and still am disposed to give her credit for, in spite of this one great deviation from the strict rule of right. And now much may be said in her situation for even that error!”
Surprisingly, Emma agrees; presumably because if she were in Jane’s situation, she’d consider anything short of murder to be fair play in getting herself out of it. And, if you factor in an aunt like Miss Bates, maybe even murder too.
When Mr. Weston appears, Emma congratulates him so handsomely that “he now only wanted time and persuasion to think the engagement no very bad thing.” And not much of either, apparently; because by the end of Emma’s visit, after the whole thing has been gone over several times with increasing enthusiasm, “he was become perfectly reconciled, and not far from thinking it the very best thing that Frank could possibly have done.” Short of walking in front of a speeding barouche, I guess.
So Mr. Weston’s feelings are safe. But…there remains Harriet. Emma is sufficiently self-aware to realize that a good part of her anger at Frank, is misdirection of her anger at herself. Yeah, he was a dirty yellow dog for the way he came on to her; but she was no worse in the way she shoved Harriet between them, like an offering on an hors d’oeuvres tray.
Poor Harriet! to be a second time the dupe of her misconceptions and flattery. Mr. Knightley had spoken prophetically, when he said once, “Emma, you have been no friend to Harriet Smith.”—She was afraid she had done her nothing but disservice.
Emma’s concern for Harriet pretty much tanks any fleeting sympathy she feels for Jane. After all, Jane’s just landed herself a five-hundred-pound marlin, while Harriet’s still sitting with on the dock with her rod and reel, serenely unaware that she has no actual bait. “[Jane’s] days of insignificance and evil were over.—She would soon be well, and happy, and prosperous.” Whereas Harriet would soon be unwell, unhappy, and preposterous.
And Emma fears this second disappointment will be worse, considering “the very superior claims of the object”—though Harriet maybe ought to take comfort that each time she’s rejected it’s by a better class of guy. Whatever her reaction, Emma feels she has to trigger it right now; Harriet needs to hear the sad news from her own lips, before it makes its way to her through the Highbury grapevine—which has been having an unusually rich harvest lately.
Emma finds it “almost ridiculous” that she’s on her way to perform the same service to Harriet, that Mrs. Weston has just performed for her: letting her know that the man she presumably loves is already taken. “The intelligence, which had been so anxiously announced to her, she was now to be anxiously announcing to another…Could the event of the disclosure bear an equal resemblance!—But of that, unfortunately, there could be no chance.”
Poor Emma. She still hasn’t realized that she’s phased into the Twilight Zone, and is now wandering through a land where everything she believes is the reverse of what’s true, and everything she attempts has the exact opposite result to what she intends. God help her if she tries to take a bath; she’ll end up hanging naked from the top of a tree.
As witness Harriet Smith, who blithely waltzes in to where Emma waits to greet her and says, “Well, Miss Woodhouse…is not this the oddest news that ever was?” And Emma has to blink, and ask for clarification of what news Harriet’s referring to, because obviously something new has happened—like, maybe Mr. Coles has built a carriage out of sandwich meat, or Miss Bates has taken a vow of silence. But oh, no. “About Jane Fairfax,” Harriet says, possibly with an audible duhin her voice.
“Did you ever hear any thing 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 any body but you, but he said you knew it.”
Emma is completely gobsmacked. She expected to reduce Harriet to quivering protoplasm with this news; but she finds that Harriet not only already knows it, but shows “no agitation, or disappointment, or peculiar concern in the discovery.” They might be talking about a lost bracelet, or the menu for tonight’s dinner.
A little round of conversational badminton ensues, with Emma eventually asking, but—but—but Harriet, weren’t you, y’know, actually in love with Frank Churchill? Which Harriet answers with a whoa, Frank Churchill? Ssssshyeah, as if.
Now Harriet is plenty agitated, and has to turn away from Emma and collect herself (though I’m pretty sure whenever Harriet collects herself, she misses several pieces). Then she turns back and gives it to Emma good and straight.
“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 every body 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.”
Slowly the veil is lifting from Emma’s eyes—and that’s saying something, because, as we’ve seen, this is a regular welder’s mask of a veil—and she realizes with horror whom Harriet is talking about. Can it be…does she really mean…Mr. Knightley?
Of course she does. Harriet’s astonished that Emma could think otherwise. It was 100% clear every time they spoke of him; though Emma, for her part, could swear that Harriet actually named Frank at least once. Well, maybe not named him, but…
“I am sure the service Mr. Frank Churchill had rendered you, in protecting you from the gipsies, was spoken of…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 is strong on my memory.”
And her memory’s not faulty. Only—this being Opposite-Land—what she’s remembering isn’t what she thought it was even then. Harriet in fact was referring to a different man and a different service—“of Mr. Knightley’s coming up and asking me to dance, when Mr. Elton would not stand up with me…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 on earth.”
Emma now has an unpleasant epiphany—one of about nineteen she’s had since getting out of bed, and it isn’t even lunchtime—as she realizes that Harriet’s persistence in this pursuit of Mr. Knightley—her attachment to her attachment, if you will—is entirely Emma’s own doing. She’s been encouraging her every step of the way, while reassuring her that the difference in social rank doesn’t mean a damn thing. This is a lesson—perhaps the only lesson—that Harriet has learned well, as she proves when she parrots that, “if he does not mind the disparity, I hope, dear Miss Woodhouse, 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.”
Reeling, Emma gropes for ammo—and finds a nice, primed musket. That is to say, she remembers advising Harriet not to invest too much of her heart unless she gets some encouragement from the gentleman in question—some indication that he’s got just as much urge to merge with her, as she has for him.
But whoops, the musket misfires. Because when Emma asks whether Harriet has “any idea of Mr. Knightley’s returning your affection”, Harriet shoots back a you-betcha. Emma, we’re told, reacts to this by “meditating, in a fixed attitude, for a few minutes.” You might think she’s summoning up a psychic death ray or something, but no. It’s actually more alarming.
A few minutes were sufficient for making her acquainted with her own heart…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!
Now she gets it. Now, when it’s probably too late. Now she finally sees “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 led her on!” Now she finally grasps the whole concept, when she’s also finally realizing that, in conducting affairs of the heart, you can’t just call do-overs. Even when you’re Emma Woodhouse.
Emma realizes she has to get the full scoop from Harriet, so she can judge whether the girl is delusional or not (hey, it’s possible; after all, Harriet is someone who basically falls madly, deeply in love with anyone she’s pointed at and given a shove towards). Emma needs to know whether Mr. Knightley has really, objectively, unarguably given Harriet some winks and cuddles on the sly. Because of this, “the wonderful story of Jane Fairfax, that was quite sunk and lost. Neither of them thought but of Mr. Knightley and themselves.” Poor Jane. You have to wonder what she’d have to do to actually hold anyone’s interest for more than a few pages. She’s just given Highbury its biggest scandal of the entire decade, possibly the entire reign, and Emma and Harriet are already, like, “Next.”
Emma’s task is not an enviable one. Trying to pull objective facts from a narrative related by Harriet Smith is a lot like trying to get baby chicks to march in lockstep. But in fact Harriet’s able to summon up quite a lot of evidence that Emma, in hindsight, has to agree is the goods. Right off the bat there are those “two decisive dances” with which Knightley rescued her from the Eltons’ hissing and spitting. And then there’s the cozy way the two of them went off together on strawberry day, and spent the morning happily à deux. Also, Knightley’s having sat with Harriet for half an hour at Hartfield before he left for London—ostensibly waiting for Emma to get back before he set out, though he’d originally claimed he couldn’t stay longer than five minutes. And then, of course, there’s the way he’s spoken of Harriet to Emma’s own ear, expressing his surprise that she’s really much more delightful a girl than he ever suspected, and talking to her isn’t at all like talking to an organ grinder’s monkey, and who knew?
Then Harriet—unknowingly—twists the knife. “I never should have presumed to think of it at first…but for you.” Yep, Emma has created her very own Frankenstein monster, and it’s gone clomping off on a rampage, carrying Emma’s ideal man away under one arm.
But this is where our Emma starts showing some real class. She’s obviously distraught and mortified, and would like nothing better than to rewind and erase Harriet from her life, if not from her planet (“Oh God! that I had never seen her!”), but she summons up all her courage and breeding and answers Harriet’s evidence like a real goddamn lady. “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 his feeling for her more than he really does.” Granted, she’s leaving open the whole issue of possible misinterpretation; but her aim is principally to make Harriet feel better, and only minimally to do the same for herself.
Emma spends the rest of the day in a fit of desperate and increasingly despairing navel-gazing.
Every moment had brought a fresh surprise; and every surprise must be matter of humiliation to her…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…
You know you’re in sad shape when even the shrubbery fails you.
She spends some time reexamining her feelings for both Knightley and Frank Churchill. Why had she so aggressively flirted with the latter when she’s always recognized, at some level, that he was the inferior of the two? Why did she insist on ordering Taco Bell when there was chateaubriand on the menu?
With insufferable vanity had she believed herself in the secret of every body’s feelings; with unpardonable arrogance proposed to arrange every body’s destiny. She was proved to have been universally mistaken; and she had not quite done nothing—for she had done mischief.
And mischief to the man she loves, worst of all. For Emma can’t but see Mr. Knightley’s hooking up with Harriet as anything but a federal-relief-scale disaster for both him and his reputation. “Such an elevation on her side! Such a debasement on his! It was horrible to Emma…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.” Which begins to make Harriet sound like a particularly virulent infestation of head lice. Emma strives hard to imagine what the hell he’s thinking, in turning to Harriet this way, but she realizes it wouldn’t the first time “for a man of first-rate abilities to be captivated by very inferior powers”, especially if those very inferior powers were laid out like a banquet for him by the man of first-rate abilities’ very good friend, Miss Woodhouse.
Likewise, Harriet would never have raised her hopes so high as to set them squarely on Mr. Knightley, had Emma not been behind her, clanging on cymbals to urge her on. “Who had been at pains to give Harriet notions of self-consequence but herself?...If Harriet, from being humble, were grown vain, it was her doing too.”
And the paradox is that Emma, from being vain, was now grown humble. “Harriet Smith might think herself not unworthy of being peculiarly, exclusively, passionately loved by Mr. Knightley. [Emma] 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 its impartiality”—that being, of course, his epic scolding of her on Box Hill…which she had endured with apparent sullenness and resentment. Emma realizes that Mr. Knightley has been watching over her for years, doing his best to guide her principles and shape her character, and she’s repaid all his efforts with juvenile irreverence…with brattishness.
Nearly all of Austen’s heroines find themselves, sooner or later, immersed in self-castigation and regret—the exceptions being Elinor Dashwood, who never does anything wrong, and Fanny Price, who never does anything, period—so we’re used to this kind of thing. What we’re waiting to see is the effect it has on her future behavior. Will it, as with Marianne Dashwood, launch her into a mania for self-improvement schemes? Or will it teach her, as it did Lizzie Bennet, to laugh at herself?
Neither, it seems. Emma now reveals that while she may be a lady, she’s still essentially a child. What she wants—allshe wants—is for things to go back to the way they were. If Mr. Knightley could only be safe from Harriet, that would do the job.
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 the precious intercourse of friendship and confidence, and her peace would be fully secured. Marriage in fact, would not do for her…Nothing should separate her from her father. She would not marry, even if she were asked by Mr. Knightley.
This is a particularly juvenile pathology; we’ve all seen it before (maybe even fallen prey it before). “I don’t want XYZ; but I don’t want anyone else to have XYZ, either.” This longing for things to remain unchanged—to stay forever in a womblike state—is Emma’s last hurdle before entering into full adulthood. She has to get over wanting to remain the most important woman in Mr. Knightley’s life, while simultaneously holding on to her virginity—as symbolically represented by her refusal to leave her father. She has to learn not to want to rule all of Highbury, or at least not to rule it from a position of authority cushioned by rank and protected by privilege, and unadulterated by a the greater of authority of anyone of a stronger mind than her own (i.e. a husband).
These desires are pretty unattractive ones; but Emma doesn’t lose her appeal for us, because we see her struggling against them. She can’t have what she wants; she’s got to grow up, to let go of her vanities and whims, and put someone else’s welfare before her own. In Mansfield Park, we saw Mary Crawford struggle in the same way, against her growing affection for Edmund Bertram—she had to fight against her arrogant aversion to being a cleric’s wife. This is another reason I call Emma an inversion of Mansfield Park; and a happy one at that, because Emma will ultimately succeed where Mary is not allowed to. (Though it helps that the thing Emma struggles with—losing Knightley to Harriet—turns out to be imaginary.)
If Emma’s going to work her way out of this, she needs space to do it in; so she writes to Harriet begging her not to come to Hartfield for a while, and hopes “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.” (Note that phrase “act as if”: Emma’s no fool.) Harriet, we’re told, “submitted, and approved, and was grateful,” which are basically her three superpowers, so no surprises there.
We then get a visit from Mrs. Weston, who’s just paid a call on her daughter-in-law-to-be and has come to tell Emma all about it, in the mistaken belief that the Frank-and-Jane brouhaha is still the most interesting thing in the world to her. But Emma in fact welcomes the distraction, and the chance to think about something besides Harriet Smith as matron of Donwell Abbey.
Mrs. Weston relates how she very cannily persuaded Jane to leave the apartment and take a drive with her. This removed the pair of them from the verbal battering of Miss Bates, who in her triumph over Jane’s good fortune now talks at twice the velocity and with three times the intensity as before, so that the nails and studs in the building’s frame have started to vibrate out of their fittings and the whole structure’s at risk of giving way at any moment.
Safe in the Westons’ carriage, Jane gradually overcame her embarrassment and self-consciousness and allowed Mrs. Weston to draw out the thoughts and feelings that had been “pent up in her own mind” all this time. “On the misery of what she had suffered, during the concealment of so many months…she was very energetic…and the quivering lip, Emma, which uttered it, was an attestation that I felt at my heart.” (Quivering lips must be some kind of female-to-female code; men witnessing a lower lip in the early stages, are more apt to do whatever they can to get three four counties way as soon as possible.)
Turns out Jane is so filled with self-recrimination that it’s a wonder she was able to sit in the carriage at all. She seemed coiled; as if ready at any moment to fling herself out beneath the wheels of oncoming traffic.
“Do not imagine, madam…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; and 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.”
Hearing Mrs. Weston relate this, Emma realizes that Jane must actually, really, honest-to-God-no-kidding love Frank Churchill. How else could she have put up with this kind of nastiness for so brutally long a time? It’s a sobering thought, given how stupidly and childishly Emma herself toyed with the idea of loving Frank…and of all the times she fake-flirted with him in front of Jane.
This brings on a second—or is it eleventh?—unhappy epiphany. “I am afraid,” Emma confesses to Mrs. Weston, “that I must often have contributed to make her unhappy.” And Mrs. Weston excuses her by saying it was “innocently done,” though she must mean the sort of innocence of a small animal that hasn’t yet been trained not to bite. But Emma’s and Frank’s billing-and-cooing, especially as public as it was—they might just as well have stood at opposite ends of the high street and done it through megaphones—made Jane “captious and irritable to a degree that must have been—that had been—hard for [Frank] to bear.” Jane couldn’t bring herself to “make the allowances…which I ought to have done, for his temper and spirits” and for “that gaiety, that playfulness of disposition,” which were what attracted her to the big lug in the first place. (Not that he was making any allowances for her disposition and spirits. Just sayin’.)
All this is what eventually drove Jane to say, “Screw this,” and sign on the dotted line with Mrs. Smallridge. So that Frank had to come riding in on his great white horse like a knight in tarnished armor, and apologize for being such an ass and please could we still get married, c’mon, I really mean it this time.
As a result, Jane is now sufficiently restored to semi-sanity to have sent word via Mrs. Weston, thanking Emma for her recent offers of a carriage to Hartfield and arrow-root, and apologizing for reacting like Emma was proposing to abduct and poison her. Emma feels another several stabs of guilt, as she realizes that if she’d been half the friend to Jane Fairfax that she should’ve been—and that everyone expected her to be—she’d never have had the need to take Harriet Smith under her wing, and Harriet could’ve been happily popping out babies at Robert Martin’s farm by now. 
Also, if she’d been half the friend to Jane Fairfax she ought to have been, she would’ve known and loved Jane well enough not to fall prey to the temptation to gossip about her; “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 harbored herself, but had so unpardonably imparted”, an imparted to Frank Churchill of all people, which was pretty much as good as imparting it to Jane herself. It really is a kind of miracle Jane can bear to speak to her at all, even through an intermediary. If they were gentlemen instead of ladies, you’d imagine it’d be pistols at dawn.
So it’s a melancholy Emma we leave at the end of this chapter, as she looks ahead to the near future and sees not only her self-regard atomized, but her little circle of subjects essentially dissolving out of her reach. Mrs. Weston is pregnant, and her baby will naturally consume most of her time for several years to come; Frank Churchill will marry Jane Fairfax, and since it’s now pretty clear he only ever really came to Highbury to see her, they’re unlikely to return more than once or twice a year; and then there’s Mr. Knightley. With him married to Harriet, Emma will lose the intimate, everyday friendship of both—the way each would just pop in at Hartfield to sit down for a nice chin-wag. This is the worst loss of all, because it’s the one she’s engineered herself.
All that’s left is more bleak, wintry evenings with her father playing crashingly dull card games, and every ninety seconds being ordered by him to get up and stoke the fire higher because Pneumonia. That, and visiting Miss Bates to have every letter of Jane’s read aloud twenty-six times followed by a four-hour Foucauldian deconstruction of the text. 
I should say, that’s all that’s left, provided Emma’s creator has no more surprises in store for her. But we know Emma’s creator better than that, don’t we?