as one of the livings in his gift was Ryton in Shropshire,
it must have been to this place that Mrs. Austen alluded as the future
home of Cassandra in the letter to her intended daughter-in-law, Mary
Lloyd. At present, however, Lord Craven could only show his interest in
Mr. Fowle by taking him out with him to the West Indies as chaplain to
his own regiment.

Jane's literary projects were now assuming a more definite shape,
although the process of selection and elimination both in subjects and
method was not yet finished. To this period belongs _Elinor and
Marianne_, a first sketch for _Sense and Sensibility_, but written in
letters. We know that it was read aloud, but no details have come down
to us, and it is difficult to guess between whom the letters can have
passed, for in the novel Elinor and Marianne are never parted, even for
a single day. It seems therefore as if the alterations subsequently made
must have been radical; and the difficulty and labour which such a
complete transformation would involve make the author's unfavourable
judgment on her own earlier method of writing all the stronger. If she
decided against using letters as a vehicle for story-telling in the
future, it seems all the more probable that the only other instance of
her use of this style was at least as early as the date we have now
reached.

The author of the _Memoir_ yielded with reluctance to many solicitations
asking him to include _Lady Susan_ in his second edition;[60] while he
himself agreed with other critics that the work was 'scarcely one on
which a literary reputation could be founded.' As a stage in the
development of the author it has great interest. Strictly speaking, it
is not a story but a study. There is hardly any attempt at a plot, or at
the grouping of various characters; such as exist are kept in the
background, and serve chiefly to bring into bolder relief the one
full-length, highly finished, wholly sinister figure which occupies the
canvas, but which seems, with the completion of the study, to have
disappeared entirely from the mind of its creator. It is equally
remarkable that an inexperienced girl should have had independence and
boldness enough to draw at full length a woman of the type of Lady
Susan, and that, after she had done so, the purity of her imagination
and the delicacy of her taste should have prevented her from ever
repeating the experiment.

But if Jane Austen never again wrote a story in letters,