He sat down with them, and improved their conversation very much.

There could be no doubt of his being a sensible man. Ten minutes were

enough to certify that. His tone, his expressions, his choice of

subject, his knowing where to stop; it was all the operation of a

sensible, discerning mind. As soon as he could, he began to talk to

her of Lyme, wanting to compare opinions respecting the place, but

especially wanting to speak of the circumstance of their happening to

be guests in the same inn at the same time; to give his own route,

understand something of hers, and regret that he should have lost such

an opportunity of paying his respects to her. She gave him a short

account of her party and business at Lyme. His regret increased as he

listened. He had spent his whole solitary evening in the room

adjoining theirs; had heard voices, mirth continually; thought they

must be a most delightful set of people, longed to be with them, but

certainly without the smallest suspicion of his possessing the shadow

of a right to introduce himself. If he had but asked who the party

were! The name of Musgrove would have told him enough. "Well, it

would serve to cure him of an absurd practice of never asking a

question at an inn, which he had adopted, when quite a young man, on

the principal of its being very ungenteel to be curious.

"The notions of a young man of one or two and twenty," said he, "as to

what is necessary in manners to make him quite the thing, are more

absurd, I believe, than those of any other set of beings in the world.

The folly of the means they often employ is only to be equalled by the

folly of what they have in view."

But he must not be addressing his reflections to Anne alone: he knew

it; he was soon diffused again among the others, and it was only at

intervals that he could return to Lyme.

His enquiries, however, produced at length an account of the scene she

had been engaged in there, soon after his leaving the place. Having

alluded to "an accident," he must hear the whole. When he questioned,

Sir Walter and Elizabeth began to question also, but the difference in

their manner of doing it could not be unfelt. She could only compare

Mr Elliot to Lady Russell, in the wish of really comprehending what had

passed, and in the degree of concern for what she must have suffered in

witnessing it.




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