Page:Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889).djvu/42

 girl's admiration for an older woman of superior attainments. Jane was constantly at Ashe, and when she met Thomas Lefroy there the two clever young people were mutually attracted. Very possibly Mrs. Lefroy hoped that the attraction might ripen into something warmer, but Jane's own tone on the matter is invariably playful.

"You scold me so much in the nice long letter which I have this moment received from you," she writes to Cassandra in January, 1796, "that I am almost afraid to tell you how my Irish friend and I behaved. Imagine to yourself everything most proffigate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together. I can expose myself, however, only once more, because he leaves the country soon after next Friday, on which day we are to have a dance at Ashe after all. He is a very gentleman-like, good-looking, pleasant young man, I assure you. But as to our having ever met, except at the last three balls, I cannot say much; for he is so excessively laughed at about me at Ashe that he is ashamed of coming to Steventon, and ran away when we called on Mrs. Lefroy a few days ago."

Cassandra's sisterly feelings had taken alarm at this "gentleman-like, good-looking, pleasant young" Irishman, and Jane was bent on teasing her, for in the same letter she mischievously tells her sister that she had received a visit from Mr. Lefroy, who "has but one fault, which time will, I trust, entirely remove;—it is that his morning coat is a great deal too light." Next she declares that she is looking forward with great impatience to the Ashe ball, "as I rather expect to receive an offer from my friend in the course of the evening. I shall refuse