“About Jane Fairfax. Did you ever hear anything so strange? Oh!⁠—you need not be afraid of owning it to me, for Mr. Weston has told me himself. I met him just now. He told me it was to be a great secret; and, therefore, I should not think of mentioning it to anybody but you, but he said you knew it.”

“What did Mr. Weston tell you?”⁠—said Emma, still perplexed.

“Oh! he told me all about it; that Jane Fairfax and Mr. Frank Churchill are to be married, and that they have been privately engaged to one another this long while. How very odd!”