erself!
Which desirable consummation was brought about at their next interview;
for, after trying to console her for the abominable conduct of Frank
Churchill, under the mistaken impression that that young gentleman had
succeeded in engaging her affections, Mr. Knightley proposed marriage to
her, and was accepted. As for Harriet, she was invited, at Emma's
suggestion, to spend a fortnight with Mr. and Mrs. John Knightley in
Brunswick Square, and there, meeting Mr. Robert Martin, through Mr.
George Knightley's contrivance, was easily persuaded to become his wife.

About this same time, too, Mrs. Weston's husband and friends were all
made happy by knowing her to be the mother of a little girl; while Emma
and Mrs. Weston were enabled to take a more lenient view of Frank
Churchill's conduct, thanks to a long letter which he wrote to the
latter lady in which he apologised for his equivocal conduct to Emma,
and expressed his regret that those attentions should have caused such
poignant distress to the lady whom he was shortly to make his wife. The
much discussed pianoforte had been his gift.

* * * * *

Persuasion

Jane Austen began her last book soon after she had finished
"Emma," and completed it in August, 1816. "Persuasion" is
connected with "Northanger Abbey" not only by the fact that
the two books were originally bound up in one volume and
published together two years later, and are still so issued,
but in the circumstance that in both stories the scene is laid
partly in Bath, a health resort with which Jane Austen was
well acquainted, as having been her place of residence from
the year 1801 till 1805.

_I.--The Vain Baronet of Kellynch Hall_

Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who,
for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage. There
he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed
one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect by
contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any
unwelcome sensations derived from domestic affairs changed naturally
into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless creations of
the last century; and there, if every other leaf was powerless, he could
read his own history with an interest which never failed. This was the
page at which the favourite volume always opened:

"ELLIO