ere an awful legacy for a mother to bequeath, an awful charge
rather to confide, to the authority of a conceited, silly father.
Fortunately, Lady Elliot had one very intimate friend, Lady Russell, a
sensible, deserving woman, who had been brought, by strong attachment to
herself, to settle close by her in the village of Kellynch; and on her
kindness Lady Elliot mainly relied for the best help and maintenance of
the good principles and instruction which she had been anxiously giving
her daughters.

Elizabeth had succeeded at sixteen to all that was possible of her
mother's rights and consequence; and being very handsome, and very like
himself, her influence had always been great, and they had gone on
together most happily. His two other children were of very inferior
value. Mary had acquired a little artificial importance by becoming Mrs.
Charles Musgrove; but Anne, with an elegance of mind and sweetness of
character which must have placed her high with any people of real
understanding, was nobody with either father or sister. To Lady Russell,
indeed, she was a most dear and highly valued god-daughter, favourite
and friend. Lady Russell loved them all; but it was only in Anne that
she could fancy the mother to revive again.

It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she
was ten years before; and, generally speaking, it is a time of life at
which scarcely any charm is lost. It was so with Elizabeth, still the
same handsome Miss Elliot that she had begun to be thirteen years ago;
and Sir Walter might be excused, therefore, in forgetting her age, or,
at least, be deemed only half a fool for thinking himself and Elizabeth
as blooming as ever, amid the wreck of the good looks of everybody else.

Elizabeth did not quite equal her father in personal contentment. She
had the consciousness of being nine-and-twenty to give her some regrets
and some apprehensions. Moreover, she had been disappointed by the
heir-presumptive, the very William Walter Elliot, Esq., whose rights had
been so generously supported by her father. Soon after Lady Elliot's
death, Sir Walter had sought Mr. Elliot's society, and had introduced
him to Elizabeth, who was quite ready to marry him. But despite the
assiduity of the baronet, the younger man let the acquaintance drop, and
married a rich woman of inferior birth, for whom, at the present time
(the summer of 1814), Elizabeth was wearing black ribbons.

Anne, too, had had her d