There is a cryptic sentence in the correspondence of 1808 which seems to show that her heart was at that time touched, and that she expected to meet someone who was an object of great interest to her. She was then staying at Godmersham, and writes— “I have been so kindly pressed to stay longer here, in consequence of an offer of Henry’s to take me back some time in September, that, not being able to detail all my objections to such a plan, I have felt myself obliged to give Edward and Elizabeth one private reason for my wishing to be at home in July. They feel the strength of it, and say no more, and one can rely on their secrecy. After this I hope we shall not be disappointed of our friend’s visit; my honour as well as my affection will be concerned in it.” If these words had occurred some years earlier, they would seem to point directly to that visitor whose coming was hindered by death, but, according to the niece’s account, they must have been written too long after this incident to have any bearing upon it. It may be, however, that Anna, being young at the time, and knowing of the affair only by hearsay, was mistaken; and in any case she does not authoritatively state the year as 1799, but believes it to have been about then. If, however, the first meeting had taken place in 1805 or 1806, this remark of Jane’s might allude to it, for no one says that the death of the man in question took place immediately after she knew him, but only before there was a second meeting. Jane’s own words, “my honour as well as my affection,” point directly to some admirer, for she would feel that once having betrayed her own eagerness to her brother and sister-in-law, the fact of the visitor’s not taking the trouble to come to see her would appear to them a direct slight. The reference can hardly have been to anything but a love-affair, and her own eagerness looks as if she were in earnest at last. If the words cannot be taken to refer to the known admirer, they must certainly have referred to some other; and as nothing more is heard of him, perhaps he did not come as she anticipated, and she, who had found it so difficult to take the proposals of others seriously, was herself mistaken when she was in earnest; but all this is mere conjecture. Sir Walter Scott, in his review of _Emma_ in the _Quarterly_, finds generally in Jane Austen’s books a deficiency of what he considers romance, and he thus indicts her—