While Sir Walter and Elizabeth were assiduously pushing their good

fortune in Laura Place, Anne was renewing an acquaintance of a very

different description.

She had called on her former governess, and had heard from her of there

being an old school-fellow in Bath, who had the two strong claims on

her attention of past kindness and present suffering. Miss Hamilton,

now Mrs Smith, had shewn her kindness in one of those periods of her

life when it had been most valuable. Anne had gone unhappy to school,

grieving for the loss of a mother whom she had dearly loved, feeling

her separation from home, and suffering as a girl of fourteen, of

strong sensibility and not high spirits, must suffer at such a time;

and Miss Hamilton, three years older than herself, but still from the

want of near relations and a settled home, remaining another year at

school, had been useful and good to her in a way which had considerably

lessened her misery, and could never be remembered with indifference.

Miss Hamilton had left school, had married not long afterwards, was

said to have married a man of fortune, and this was all that Anne had

known of her, till now that their governess's account brought her

situation forward in a more decided but very different form.

She was a widow and poor. Her husband had been extravagant; and at his

death, about two years before, had left his affairs dreadfully

involved. She had had difficulties of every sort to contend with, and

in addition to these distresses had been afflicted with a severe

rheumatic fever, which, finally settling in her legs, had made her for

the present a cripple. She had come to Bath on that account, and was

now in lodgings near the hot baths, living in a very humble way, unable

even to afford herself the comfort of a servant, and of course almost

excluded from society.

Their mutual friend answered for the satisfaction which a visit from

Miss Elliot would give Mrs Smith, and Anne therefore lost no time in

going. She mentioned nothing of what she had heard, or what she

intended, at home. It would excite no proper interest there. She only

consulted Lady Russell, who entered thoroughly into her sentiments, and

was most happy to convey her as near to Mrs Smith's lodgings in

Westgate Buildings, as Anne chose to be taken.

The visit was paid, their acquaintance re-established, their interest

in each other more than re-kindled. The first ten minutes had its

awkwardness and its emotion. Twelve years were gone since they had

parted, and each presented a somewhat different person from what the

other had imagined. Twelve years had changed Anne from the blooming,

silent, unformed girl of fifteen, to the elegant little woman of

seven-and-twenty, with every beauty except bloom, and with manners as

consciously right as they were invariably gentle; and twelve years had

transformed the fine-looking, well-grown Miss Hamilton, in all the glow

of health and confidence of superiority, into a poor, infirm, helpless

widow, receiving the visit of her former protegee as a favour; but all

that was uncomfortable in the meeting had soon passed away, and left

only the interesting charm of remembering former partialities and

talking over old times.




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