ot be wheedled and caressed at
last into making her the wife of Sir William.

It cannot be doubted that Sir Walter and Elizabeth were shocked and
mortified by the loss of their companion, and the discovery of their
deception in her. They had their great cousins, to be sure, to resort
to for comfort; but they must long feel that to flatter and follow
others, without being flattered and followed in turn, is but a state of
half enjoyment.

Anne, satisfied at a very early period of Lady Russell's meaning to
love Captain Wentworth as she ought, had no other alloy to the
happiness of her prospects than what arose from the consciousness of
having no relations to bestow on him which a man of sense could value.
There she felt her own inferiority very keenly. The disproportion in
their fortune was nothing; it did not give her a moment's regret; but
to have no family to receive and estimate him properly, nothing of
respectability, of harmony, of good will to offer in return for all the
worth and all the prompt welcome which met her in his brothers and
sisters, was a source of as lively pain as her mind could well be
sensible of under circumstances of otherwise strong felicity. She had
but two friends in the world to add to his list, Lady Russell and Mrs
Smith. To those, however, he was very well disposed to attach himself.
Lady Russell, in spite of all her former transgressions, he could now
value from his heart. While he was not obliged to say that he believed
her to have been right in originally dividing them, he was ready to say
almost everything else in her favour, and as for Mrs Smith, she had
claims of various kinds to recommend her quickly and permanently.

Her recent good offices by Anne had been enough in themselves, and
their marriage, instead of depriving her of one friend, secured her
two. She was their earliest visitor in their settled life; and Captain
Wentworth, by putting her in the way of recovering her husband's
property in the West Indies, by writing for her, acting for her, and
seeing her through all the petty difficulties of the case with the
activity and exertion of a fearless man and a determined friend, fully
requited the services which she had rendered, or ever meant to render,
to his wife.

Mrs Smith's enjoyments were not spoiled by this improvement of income,
with some improvement of health, and the acquisition of such friends to
be often with, for her cheerfulness and mental alacrity did not f