Emma

by Jane Austen

and with all her advantages, natural and domestic, she was now in great danger of suffering from intellectual solitude.

nobody within her reach will be good enough for her. Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief. Nothing so easy as for a young lady to raise her expectations too high.

“I am not fond of dinner-visiting,” said he—“I never was. No more is Emma. Late hours do not agree with us.

“Not your vain spirit, but your serious spirit.—If one leads you wrong, I am sure the other tells you of it.”

Could a linguist, could a grammarian, could even a mathematician have seen what she did, have witnessed their appearance together, and heard their history of it, without feeling that circumstances had been at work to make them peculiarly interesting to each other?—

Jane Fairfax was still at her grandmother’s;

Me