Jane Fairfax's Hidden Story — Emma

Jane Fairfax is an orphan. Her father died abroad and her mother soon followed. Colonel Campbell, who owed her father a debt, raised her in London and gave her an excellent education, but her small inheritance means she must eventually work as a governess, a fate she has accepted at twenty-one though it costs her dearly.

Emma dislikes Jane without quite knowing why, though an old charge from Knightley still stings: Emma sees in Jane the accomplished woman she wants to be thought herself. That comparison makes every polite meeting feel like a test.

Jane's first visit after two years strikes Emma as remarkably elegant and self-controlled. Pity for Jane's coming sacrifice and a Dixon attachment story soften Emma into charity on the walk home from the Bateses' small crowded rooms.

The feeling does not last through the Hartfield evening. At Hartfield Jane is polite but reserved about Weymouth, the Dixons, and Frank Churchill. Emma reads caution as hiding something beneath Jane's polished manners. When Jane will say only that everybody finds Churchill's manners pleasing, Emma cannot forgive her coolness and the reserve that feels like artifice rather than modesty, and Emma's brief charity turns quickly back into sharp dislike.