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 mention of bets made by him on politics and other subjects, and his own particular pair of bowls still survive. He was tutor in 1811, when a great fire occurred in the College, and took his share in appealing for funds with which to rebuild it, application being chiefly made to those who agreed with the college politics in Church and State. He seems to have been one of a large family of brothers; another being John Blackall, of Balliol College, Oxford, for many years a distinguished Exeter physician, who did not die until 1860. [67] Mr. Heathcote and Miss Elizabeth Bigg were married in 1798.