and you have worded these questions in as tactful a way as possible, considering that you would be asking an awful lot about two people who, respectively, you do not know well and do not know at all. If anyone were asking me quite as many questions about two comparative strangers to them I would wonder why they wanted to know, and in the absence of any other possible motive would assume them to be plain nosy. And I'm not sure if Emma actually would be that tactful - I'm going on the way she questions Harriet about Mr Martin back in Chapter 4, which is pretty blunt.

I don't quite understand your last point. Certainly Jane knows that the whole of Highbury will hear anything she writes to her aunt. For which reason Jane would know better than to include anything about her private views of the Dixon marriage or any other matter in her letters. Why has that got any bearing on Emma's probing? If Jane refused to tell Emma the pattern for the garters she knitted for Mrs Bates, which all of Highbury has heard about, if Emma asked for it, that would indeed be rude - refusing to tell Emma her private feelings is, IMO, not, so long as it is polite stonewalling. If Jane were to say "Why exactly do you want to know all this? What business is it of yours?" that would be rude - but she does not.