r second meeting, deliberately sought Anne out at a concert
which she and her people were attending. The most significant part of
their conversation was his comment on Louisa's engagement to Captain
Benwick. He frankly confessed he could not understand it as far as it
concerned Benwick.

"A man like him, in his situation, with a heart pierced, wounded, almost
broken! Fanny Harville was a very superior person, and his attachment to
her was indeed attachment. A man does not recover from such a devotion
of the heart to such a woman. He ought not; he does not."

But the captain was prevented from saying much more by the assiduous
attention which Mr. Elliot paid to her at this concert.

"Very long," said he, "has the name of Anne Elliot possessed a charm
over my fancy; and, if I dared, I would breathe my wishes that the name
might never change."

Such language might almost be taken to be a proposal; but Anne was too
much interested in watching Captain Wentworth to pay much attention to
it.

She had still in mind the words which her sometime lover had spoken at
the concert, when a visit she had paid to an invalid friend, an old
schoolfellow of hers called Mrs. Smith, gave her complete enlightenment
as to the character and present objects of Mr. Elliot. Mrs. Smith, who
was a widow, and whose husband had been a bosom friend of Mr. Elliot's,
described him as "a man without heart or conscience, a designing, wary,
cold-blooded being, who thinks only of himself; who for his own interest
or ease would be guilty of any cruelty, or any treachery that could be
perpetrated without risk of damaging his general character." She told
how he had encouraged her husband, to whom he was under great
obligations, to indulge in the most ruinous expense, and then, on his
death, caused her endless difficulties and distress by refusing to act
as his executor. She also informed Anne that he had married his first
wife, whom he treated badly, entirely on account of her fortune, and
that, though among the present reasons for continuing the acquaintance
with his relations was a genuine attachment to herself, his original
intention in seeking a reconciliation with Sir Walter had been to secure
for himself the reversion of the baronetcy by preventing the holder of
the title from falling into the snares of Mrs. Clay.

The next day a party of the Musgroves appeared at Camden Place. Mrs.
Musgrove, senior, had some old friends at Bath whom she wanted to s