"No, you had said so much against him that I could not wish either for the obligation or the intimacy which the use of his carriage must have created. I should not even have liked the appearance of it." "You did very right, though I wonder at your forbearance, and I do not think I could have done it myself. He seemed so eager to fetch you that I could not say no, though it rather went against me to be throwing you together, so well as I knew his tricks; but I did long to see you, and it was a clever way of getting you home. Besides, it won't do to be too nice. Nobody could have thought of the Edwards letting you have their coach, after the horses being out so late. But what am I to say to Sam?" "If you are guided by me you will not encourage him to think of Miss Edwards. The father is decidedly against him, the mother shows him no favour, and I doubt his having any interest with Mary. She danced twice with Captain Hunter, and I think shows him in general as much encouragement as is consistent with her disposition and the circumstances she is placed in. She once mentioned Sam, and certainly with a little confusion; but that was perhaps merely owing to the consciousness of his liking her, which may very probably have come to her knowledge. "Oh! dear, yes. She has heard enough of _that_ from us all! Poor Sam! he is out of luck as well as other people. For the life of me, Emma, I cannot help feeling for those that are crossed in love. Well, now begin and give me an account of everything as it happened." Emma obeyed her, and Elizabeth listened with very little interruption till she heard of Mr. Howard as a partner. "Dance with Mr. Howard. Good heavens! You don't say so! Why, he is quite one of the great and grand ones. Did you not find him very high?" "His manners are of a kind to give me much more ease and confidence than Tom Musgrave's." "Well, go on. I should have been frightened out of my wits to have had anything to do with the Osbornes' set." Emma concluded her narration. "And so you really did not dance with Tom Musgrave at all, but you must have liked him--you must have been struck with him altogether?" "I do _not_ like him, Elizabeth. I allow his person and air to be good; and that his manners to a certain point--his address rather--is pleasing. But I see nothing else to admire in him. On the contrary, he seems very vain, very conceited, absurdly anxious for distinction, and absolutely contemptible in some of the measures he takes for being so. There is a ridiculousness about him that entertains me; but his company gives me no other agreeable emotion." "My dearest Emma! You are like nobody else in the world. It is well Margaret is not by. You do not offend _me_, though I hardly know how to believe you; but Margaret would never forgive such words." "I wish Margaret could have heard him profess his ignorance of her being out of the country; he declared it seemed only two days since he had seen her."