aunt at Ashe, and was invited with the rest of the neighborhood to the ball given by Mr. Bigge for his daughters at Manydown Park. Cassandra was on a visit to a member of the Fowle family, and had perhaps thought that Jane was getting too lively on the subject of Mr. Lefroy, seeing that the affair was not expected to end in a marriage. Jane wrote to her, saying: "You scold me so much in the nice long letter which I have this moment
received from you, that I am almost ashamed to tell you how my Irish friend and I behaved. Imagine to yourself everything most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together. I can expose myself, however, only once more, because he leaves the country soon after next Friday, on which day we are to have a dance at Ashe, after all."
Their profligacy began to attract general attention, and Tom Lefroy seemed to feel that he had gone far enough. Jane said, in trying to make Cassandra think lightly of the matter, that they really had not met except at the balls. "He is so excessively laughed at about me at Ashe that he is
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ashamed of coming to Steventon, and ran away when we called on Mrs. Lefroy a few days ago." The day before Mrs. Lefroy's ball she wrote: "I look forward with great impatience to it, as I rather expect to receive an offer from my friend in the course of the evening. I shall refuse him, however, unless he promises to give away his white coat." Cassandra was to have bought some silk stockings for her, but as she had said nothing about them in her last letter, Jane hoped they had not been bought after all, because she had spent all her money now on white gloves and some pink figured silk.
Invitations for balls and evening parties in the country, at a time when roads between towns and villages lay silent and unlighted between meadows and woods, were always issued for the moonlight nights of the month, and Bottom's cry: "Look in the almanac; find out moonshine, find out moonshine," was echoed by every intending hostess. In the Rectory at Ashe they made room for dancing by
opening the folding doors between the drawing room and the
morning room; the windows of the latter looked out onto the lawn, on one side of which was a great yew hedge. The yews, black under the brilliant moon of winter, and the gravel that crackled and glistened under carriage wheels, were exchanged as the guests
jumped out of their carriages and ran into the house, for the warmth of high-piled fires, the magic radiance of candlelight, the tuning up of violins and the welcoming, gracious gaiety of Mrs. Lefroy. Jane in her rosecolored silk dress had a reason besides her love of dancing for being excited; whether Tom Lefroy saw her first on the stairs or in the hall or in one of the halves of the ballroom; how soon they danced together, how much Mrs. Lefroy, in the midst of her cares as hostess, had leisure to keep an eye on them, can never now be
known. Tom Lefroy lived to
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be Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, and as an exceedingly old man he said that he had once been in love with the great Jane Austen; "but it was a boy's love," he added.
It has sometimes been noticed that the most disconsolate widowers make the speediest remarriages, and James Austen's was a case in point. His second choice was Mary Lloyd. Eliza de Feuillide did not hesitate to point out for the benefit of her correspondents that Mary was neither handsome nor rich, but she admitted her to be sensible and goodhumored, and added: "Jane seems much pleased with the match, and it is natural she should, having long known and liked the lady." Mrs. Austen's pleasure was great; she wrote to Mary in the warmest terms. "Had the selection been mine, you, my dear Mary, are the person I should have chosen for James' wife, Anna's mother and my daughter, being as certain as I can be of anything in this uncertain world, that you will greatly increase and promote the happiness of each of the three. . . . I look forward to you
John H. Trestrail
J. Steven Butler
Mark Richard Zubro
Gus Lee
Nina Lane
Elie Wiesel
Albert Tucher
Watt Key
Ella Fox
Haven Francis