If she means Miss Fairfax and Frank Churchill, he has heard that already, he tells her shortly.
Emma is relieved, but as she reminds him that he had once tried to give her a caution, and she wishes she had attended to it, her voice sinks and she sighs, adding, “I seem doomed to blindness.”
She suddenly finds her arm drawn within his and pressed, and hears him fairly faltering, “Time, my dearest Emma, time will heal the wound—the feelings of the warmest friendship—indignation—abominable scoundrel!”
Emma[63] must undeceive him instantly.
“You are very kind, but you are mistaken. I am not in want of that sort of compassion. I was very foolishly tempted to say and do many things which may well lay me open to unpleasant conjectures; but I have no other reason to regret that I was not in the secret earlier.”
“Emma,” he cries eagerly, “are you indeed——” but checking himself, “No, no. I understand you: forgive me. I am pleased that you can even say so much. He is no object of regret. I could only be certain there was a preference. He is a disgrace to the name of man, and is he to be rewarded with that sweet young woman?”
Emma has to renew her protestations, striving for the old liveliness to carry off her sense of awkwardness.
“I am in a very extraordinary situation. I cannot let you continue in your error; and yet, perhaps, since my manners gave such an impression, I have as much reason to be ashamed of confessing that I never have been at all attached to the person we are speaking of, as it might be natural for a woman to feel in confessing exactly the reverse. But I never have.”
Her companion says nothing, and Emma, to convince him, recapitulates earnestly the true particulars of the case—Frank’s being the son of Mr. Weston, his having been continually at Hartfield; the fact that his attentions flattered her, even after she had come to look on them as a habit, a trick, nothing that had called for seriousness on her part. He had imposed on her, still he had not taken her in, in the serious meaning of the words.
Mr. Knightley grows cooler, and admits he may have underrated Frank Churchill. With such a woman he has a chance. He is a fortunate man, at three-and-twenty to have drawn a prize. Everything turns out well for him. “He meets with a young woman at a watering-place, gains her affection, cannot even weary her by negligent treatment; and had he and all his family sought round the world for a perfect wife for him, they could not have found her superior. His aunt is in the way. His aunt dies. He has only to speak; his friends are eager to promote his happiness. He has used everybody ill, and they are all delighted to forgive him.”