iend of Miss Anne Elliot, and to be preferred
by her to her own family connections among the nobility of England and
Ireland! Mrs Smith! Such a name!"

Mrs Clay, who had been present while all this passed, now thought it
advisable to leave the room, and Anne could have said much, and did
long to say a little in defence of her friend's not very dissimilar
claims to theirs, but her sense of personal respect to her father
prevented her. She made no reply. She left it to himself to
recollect, that Mrs Smith was not the only widow in Bath between thirty
and forty, with little to live on, and no surname of dignity.

Anne kept her appointment; the others kept theirs, and of course she
heard the next morning that they had had a delightful evening. She had
been the only one of the set absent, for Sir Walter and Elizabeth had
not only been quite at her ladyship's service themselves, but had
actually been happy to be employed by her in collecting others, and had
been at the trouble of inviting both Lady Russell and Mr Elliot; and Mr
Elliot had made a point of leaving Colonel Wallis early, and Lady
Russell had fresh arranged all her evening engagements in order to wait
on her. Anne had the whole history of all that such an evening could
supply from Lady Russell. To her, its greatest interest must be, in
having been very much talked of between her friend and Mr Elliot; in
having been wished for, regretted, and at the same time honoured for
staying away in such a cause. Her kind, compassionate visits to this
old schoolfellow, sick and reduced, seemed to have quite delighted Mr
Elliot. He thought her a most extraordinary young woman; in her
temper, manners, mind, a model of female excellence. He could meet
even Lady Russell in a discussion of her merits; and Anne could not be
given to understand so much by her friend, could not know herself to be
so highly rated by a sensible man, without many of those agreeable
sensations which her friend meant to create.

Lady Russell was now perfectly decided in her opinion of Mr Elliot.
She was as much convinced of his meaning to gain Anne in time as of his
deserving her, and was beginning to calculate the number of weeks which
would free him from all the remaining restraints of widowhood, and
leave him at liberty to exert his most open powers of pleasing. She
would not speak to Anne with half the certainty she felt on the
subject, she would venture on little more than hints of what m