“Ever hear her!” repeated Emma. “You forget how much she belongs to Highbury. I have heard her every year of our lives since we both began. She plays charmingly.”

“You think so, do you?⁠—I wanted the opinion of someone who could really judge. She appeared to me to play well, that is, with considerable taste, but I know nothing of the matter myself.⁠—I am excessively fond of music, but without the smallest skill or right of judging of anybody’s performance.⁠—I have been used to hear hers admired; and I remember one proof of her being thought to play well:⁠—a man, a very musical man, and in love with another woman⁠—engaged to her⁠—on the point of marriage⁠—would yet never ask that other woman to sit down to the instrument, if the lady in question could sit down instead⁠—never seemed to like to hear one if he could hear the other. That, I thought, in a man of known musical talent, was some proof.”

“Proof indeed!” said Emma, highly amused.⁠—“ Mr. Dixon is very musical, is he? We shall know more about them all, in half an hour, from you, than Miss Fairfax would have vouchsafed in half a year.”