Page:Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889).djvu/49

 most husband-hunting butterfly she ever remembers." Such a description of Jane Austen carries glaring improbability on the face of it, but fortunately it is needless to begin a defence of her character, for Mrs. Mitford married and left Ashe before Jane was ten years old, and the intercourse between Ashe and Steventon had come to an end about three years before that. Most unintentionally, therefore. Miss Mitford perpetuated some complete misunderstanding of her mother's words, and we may fairly believe that some similar misunderstanding originated the story repeated to Sir Francis Doyle, who, seeing all its improbabilities, suggests himself that in some way or other his informant must have been "most unaccountably mistaken."