Austen Said:

"but there is no saying which. He has been running after them, too, long enough, one would think, to make up his mind. Ay, this comes of the peace. If it were war now, he would have settled it long ago. We sailors, Miss Elliot, cannot afford to make long courtships in time of war. How many days was it, my dear, between the first time of my seeing you and our sitting down together in our lodgings at North Yarmouth?"

"Well, and I had heard of you as a very pretty girl, and what were we to wait for besides? I do not like having such things so long in hand. I wish Frederick would spread a little more canvass, and bring us home one of these young ladies to Kellynch. Then there would always be company for them. And very nice young ladies they both are; I hardly know one from the other."

A letter from his friend, Captain Harville, having found him out at last, had brought intelligence of Captain Harville's being settled with his family at Lyme for the winter; of their being therefore, quite unknowingly, within twenty miles of each other. Captain Harville had never been in good health since a severe wound which he received two years before, and Captain Wentworth's anxiety to see him had determined him to go immediately to Lyme. He had been there for four-and-twenty hours.

His acquittal was complete, his friendship warmly honoured,

going there again himself, it was only seventeen miles from Uppercross; though November, the weather was by no means bad;

He had been engaged to Captain Harville's sister, and was now mourning her loss. They had been a year or two waiting for fortune and promotion. Fortune came, his prize-money as lieutenant being great; promotion, too, came at last; but Fanny Harville did not live to know it. She had died the preceding summer while he was at sea.

believed it impossible for man to be more attached to woman than poor Benwick had been to Fanny Harville, or to be more deeply afflicted under the dreadful change.

his disposition as of the sort which must suffer heavily, uniting very strong feelings with quiet, serious, and retiring manners, and a decided taste for reading, and sedentary pursuits.

"so entirely out of season,"

"no thoroughfare of Lyme,"

"no expectation of company,"

coming to Lyme for a month, did him more good than all the medicine he took;

being by the sea, always makes him feel young again.

"That man is struck with you, and even I, at this moment, see something like Anne Elliot again."

"Ah!"

"it is the very man we passed."

"Pray,"

"can you tell us the name of the gentleman who is just gone away?"

"Yes, Sir, a Mr Elliot, a gentleman of large fortune, came in last night from Sidmouth. Dare say you heard the carriage, sir, while you were at dinner; and going on now for Crewkherne, in his way to Bath and London."

"Elliot!"

"No, ma'am, he did not mention no particular family; but

he said

his master was a very rich gentleman, and would be a baronight some day."

"Putting all these very extraordinary circumstances together,"

"we must consider it to be the arrangement of Providence, that you should not be introduced to your cousin."

"Miss Elliot,"

"you have done a good deed in making that poor fellow talk so much. I wish he could have such company oftener. It is bad for him, I know, to be shut up as he is; but what can we do? We cannot part."

"Ay, true enough,"

"only June."

"Not till the first week of August, when he came home from the Cape, just made into the Grappler. I was at Plymouth dreading to hear of him; he sent in letters, but the Grappler was under orders for Portsmouth. There the news must follow him, but who was to tell it? not I. I would as soon have been run up to the yard-arm. Nobody could do it, but that good fellow"

"The Laconia had come into Plymouth the week before; no danger of her being sent to sea again. He stood his chance for the rest; wrote up for leave of absence, but without waiting the return, travelled night and day till he got to Portsmouth, rowed off to the Grappler that instant, and never left the poor fellow for a week. That's what he did, and nobody else could have saved poor James. You may think, Miss Elliot, whether he is dear to us!"

Lord Byron's "dark blue seas"

the jar too great;

"Is there no one to help me?"

"Oh God! her father and mother!"

"True, true, a surgeon this instant,"

"Anne, Anne,"

"What is to be done next? What, in heaven's name, is to be done next?"

"Yes, yes, to the inn,"

"I will carry her myself. Musgrove, take care of the others."

The head had received a severe contusion, but he had seen greater injuries recovered from: he was by no means hopeless;

"Thank God!"

"We must be decided, and without the loss of another minute. Every minute is valuable. Some one must resolve on being off for Uppercross instantly. Musgrove, either you or I must go."

He would be as little incumbrance as possible to Captain and Mrs Harville; but as to leaving his sister in such a state, he neither ought, nor would.

The usefulness of her staying! She who had not been able to remain in Louisa's room, or to look at her, without sufferings which made her worse than helpless!

"Then it is settled, Musgrove,"

"that you stay, and that I take care of your sister home. But as to the rest, as to the others, if one stays to assist Mrs Harville, I think it need be only one. Mrs Charles Musgrove will, of course, wish to get back to her children; but if Anne will stay, no one so proper, so capable as Anne."

"You will stay, I am sure; you will stay and nurse her;"

it would be much better for him to take a chaise from the inn, and leave Mr Musgrove's carriage and horses to be sent home the next morning early, when there would be the farther advantage of sending an account of Louisa's night.

"Don't talk of it, don't talk of it,"