him, however, unless he promises to give away his white coat," and then announces with mock solemnity that she intends to give up all her other admirers, and "confine myself in future to Mr. Tom Lefroy, for whom I don't care sixpence." Finally, on January 16th, she tells her sister that "at length the day is come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy, and when you receive this it will be over. My tears flow as I write at the melancholy idea." And thus ended this little episode "comme à vingt ans." It is impossible to imagine that Jane had any serious feeling for "Tom Lefroy," and, as he was three times married in the course of his life, and lived to be about ninety, his heart cannot have been irretrievably wounded either. Throughout his long and brilliant career, however, he never forgot his fair partner of the Ashe and Basingstoke balls, and to the last would refer to her as a girl much to be admired, and not easily to be forgotten by anyone who had once known her, an opinion which most others who knew her endorse warmly.
Two years later we hear of another "passage" in Jane's life, which seems more serious on the gentleman's side, though it is difficult to say whether she was touched by it or not. Writing in November 1798 (to her sister, as usual) she says that she has had a visit from Mrs. Lefroy, "with whom, in spite of interruptions both from my father and James, I was enough alone to hear all that was interesting, which you will easily credit when I tell you that of her nephew she said nothing at all, and of her friend very little. She showed me a letter which she had received from her friend a few weeks ago (in answer to one written by her to recommend a nephew of Mrs. Russell to his notice at Cambridge), towards the end of which was a
