to fine sounds than to my feelings.
How did Miss Campbell appear to like it?"

"It was her very particular friend, you know."

"Poor comfort!" said Emma, laughing. "One would rather have a stranger
preferred than one's very particular friend--with a stranger it might
not recur again--but the misery of having a very particular friend
always at hand, to do every thing better than one does oneself!--Poor
Mrs. Dixon! Well, I am glad she is gone to settle in Ireland."

"You are right. It was not very flattering to Miss Campbell; but she
really did not seem to feel it."

"So much the better--or so much the worse:--I do not know which. But
be it sweetness or be it stupidity in her--quickness of friendship, or
dulness of feeling--there was one person, I think, who must have felt
it: Miss Fairfax herself. She must have felt the improper and dangerous
distinction."

"As to that--I do not--"

"Oh! do not imagine that I expect an account of Miss Fairfax's
sensations from you, or from any body else. They are known to no human
being, I guess, but herself. But if she continued to play whenever she
was asked by Mr. Dixon, one may guess what one chuses."

"There appeared such a perfectly good understanding among them all--"
he began rather quickly, but checking himself, added, "however, it is
impossible for me to say on what terms they really were--how it might
all be behind the scenes. I can only say that there was smoothness
outwardly. But you, who have known Miss Fairfax from a child, must be
a better judge of her character, and of how she is likely to conduct
herself in critical situations, than I can be."

"I have known her from a child, undoubtedly; we have been children
and women together; and it is natural to suppose that we should be
intimate,--that we should have taken to each other whenever she visited
her friends. But we never did. I hardly know how it has happened; a
little, perhaps, from that wickedness on my side which was prone to take
disgust towards a girl so idolized and so cried up as she always was,
by her aunt and grandmother, and all their set. And then, her reserve--I
never could attach myself to any one so completely reserved."

"It is a most repulsive quality, indeed," said he. "Oftentimes very
convenient, no doubt, but never pleasing. There is safety in reserve,
but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person."

"Not till the reserve ceases towards oneself; and then the attraction
may be the g