was nearly twenty-seven). My aunts
had very small fortunes; and on their father's
death, they and their mother would be, they were
aware, but poorly off. I believe most young women
so circumstanced would have gone on trusting to
love after marriage.

If this event occurred after the more romantic incident in the west of
England it is possible that Jane had hardly as yet regained her wonted
balance of mind and calmness of judgment. We have no further tale of the
sort to tell. As time went on, she acquiesced cheerfully in the gradual
disappearance of youth. She did not eschew balls, but was indifferent
whether she was asked to dance or not: 'It was the same room in which we
danced fifteen years ago; I thought it all over, and in spite of the
shame of being so much older, felt with thankfulness that I was quite as
happy now as then. . . . You will not expect to hear that _I_ was asked to
dance, but I was.'

She was to spend the remainder of her life in the centre of family
interests, and by degrees to become engrossed in the exciting business
of authorship. She could afford to laugh at the suggestion that she
should marry the Rector of Chawton, and promise to do so, whatever his
reluctance or her own. She retained to the end her freshness and humour,
her sympathy with the young: '_We_ do not grow older, of course,' she
says in one of her latest letters; and it is evident that this was the
impression left with the rising generation of nephews and nieces from
their intercourse with her.

FOOTNOTES:

[63] All the letters in this volume from Jane to Cassandra, as to the
source of which no statement is made, are quoted from Lord Brabourne's
collection.

[64] _Sailor Brothers_, pp. 233 _et seq._

[65] _North_ Cadbury is the correct name of the parish.

[66] The Blackall family had been established and respected in
Devonshire since the episcopate of their ancestor, Offspring Blackall,
Bishop of Exeter in the time of Queen Anne. Our Sam Blackall (an uncle
of the same name had preceded him as Fellow of Emmanuel) was
great-grandson of the Bishop; he became Fellow, and was ordained, in
1794; took the living of North Cadbury in 1812, and lived until 1842.
His college record (which we owe to the courtesy of the Fellows)
corresponds very well with our notices of him. He was evidently a
sociable and lively member of the combination-room. The 'parlour-book'
contains frequent me