Page:A memoir of Jane Austen (Fourth Edition).pdf/380

 basin of gruel, he had the pleasure of observing te Mr. Watson that he should leave him at supper while he went home to dinner himself. The carriage was ordered to the door, and no entreaties for his staying longer could now avail; for he well knew that if he stayed he would have to sit down to supper in less than ten minutes, which to a man whose heart had been long fixed on calling his next meal a dinner, was quite insupportable. On finding him determined to go, Margaret began to wink and nod at Elizabeth to ask him to dinner for the following day, and Elizabeth at last, not able to resist hints which her own hospitable social temper more than half seconded, gave the invitation—‘Would he give Robert the meeting, they should be very happy?’

‘With the greatest pleasure,’ was his first reply. In a moment afterwards, ‘That is, if I can possibly get here in time; but I shoot with Lord Osborne, and therefore must not engage. You will not think of me unless you see me.” And so he departed, delighted in the uncertainty in which he had left it.

Margaret, in the joy of her heart, under circumstances which she chose to consider as peculiarly propitious, would willingly have made a confidante of Emma when they were alone for a short time the next morning, and had proceeded so far as to say, ‘The young man who was here last night, my dear Emma, and returms to-day, is more interesting to me than perhaps you may be aware ;’ but Emma, pretending to understand nothing extraordinary in the