Page:Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889).djvu/154

 love, and being a young man with little regard for anyone's feelings but his own, has persuaded her, against her better judgment, into a secret engagement. The plea for it is that his family might disinherit him if they knew of the engagement too soon, and, for a time, the secret is easy enough to keep; but when Jane comes for her usual visit to her grandmother and aunt at Highbury, Frank Churchill immediately finds the opportunity for a visit to his father there, and the connection between him and his fiancée necessitates an amount of double-dealing which is very painful to her though it greatly amuses him. Emma narrowly escapes being a sufferer by this.

"In spite of Emma's resolution of never marrying, there was something in the name, in the idea, of Mr. Frank Churchill which always interested her. She had frequently thought—especially since his father's marriage with Miss Taylor—that if she were to marry, he was the very person to suit her in age, character, and condition. He seemed, by this connection between the families, quite to belong to her. She could not but suppose it to be a match that everybody who knew them must think of. That Mr. and Mrs. Weston did think of it, she was very strongly persuaded; and though not meaning to be induced by him or by anybody else to give up a situation which she believed more replete with good than any she could change it for, she had a great curiosity to see him, a decided intention of finding him pleasant, of being liked by him, to a certain degree, and a sort of pleasure in the idea of their being coupled in their friends' imaginations."

When Mr. Frank Churchill appears, he is pleasant, lively, and well-bred, quite willing to carry on a