To realize how much of a crisis this chapter is, the reader must come back to it after finishing the book. He will then see how Frank's flirtation with Emma has double meaning, that it very much involves Jane, for under the surface is a lovers' quarrel. It is for this reason that in the beginning Frank is silent and dull, and it is also for this reason that, as the Eltons walk away, he takes the opportunity to speak disparagingly of people's meeting at resorts. The reader who comes back to the chapter will be able to view Jane's situation with sympathetic understanding, and he will be able to see Frank's actions and comments as cruel but also psychologically believable as those of a lover.
Emma's crisis involves three things. First, she is over her attachment to Frank to the point of merely flirting. Second, she gets an actual though jesting invitation from Frank to find him a wife who, except for the hazel eyes (really hers) which he mentions, sounds very much like Harriet (since he is a perceptive young man, one wonders if he has guessed Emma's scheming and deliberately puts in one confusing detail); in terms of plot this is a test of Emma's determination to be strictly passive about the scheme. Third, after many years of containment Emma publicly expresses one part of her true feeling for Miss Bates and, in thereby bringing upon herself the reproaches of George, begins to realize how much his opinion of her matters. Her tears represent her own good nature, her sense of Miss Bates' goodness, and her sense of George's concern. Her own basic balance of good sense is also represented when she answers George about Miss Bates: "I know there is not a better creature in the world: but you must allow, that what is good and what is ridiculous are most unfortunately blended in her." Except perhaps for George, this last clause could be Miss Austen's ironic summation of practically every "creature" in the novel.
