Such opposition, as these feelings produced, was more than Anne could

combat. Young and gentle as she was, it might yet have been possible

to withstand her father's ill-will, though unsoftened by one kind word

or look on the part of her sister; but Lady Russell, whom she had

always loved and relied on, could not, with such steadiness of opinion,

and such tenderness of manner, be continually advising her in vain.

She was persuaded to believe the engagement a wrong thing: indiscreet,

improper, hardly capable of success, and not deserving it. But it was

not a merely selfish caution, under which she acted, in putting an end

to it. Had she not imagined herself consulting his good, even more

than her own, she could hardly have given him up. The belief of being

prudent, and self-denying, principally for his advantage, was her chief

consolation, under the misery of a parting, a final parting; and every

consolation was required, for she had to encounter all the additional

pain of opinions, on his side, totally unconvinced and unbending, and

of his feeling himself ill used by so forced a relinquishment. He had

left the country in consequence.

A few months had seen the beginning and the end of their acquaintance;

but not with a few months ended Anne's share of suffering from it. Her

attachment and regrets had, for a long time, clouded every enjoyment of

youth, and an early loss of bloom and spirits had been their lasting

effect.

More than seven years were gone since this little history of sorrowful

interest had reached its close; and time had softened down much,

perhaps nearly all of peculiar attachment to him, but she had been too

dependent on time alone; no aid had been given in change of place

(except in one visit to Bath soon after the rupture), or in any novelty

or enlargement of society. No one had ever come within the Kellynch

circle, who could bear a comparison with Frederick Wentworth, as he

stood in her memory. No second attachment, the only thoroughly

natural, happy, and sufficient cure, at her time of life, had been

possible to the nice tone of her mind, the fastidiousness of her taste,

in the small limits of the society around them. She had been

solicited, when about two-and-twenty, to change her name, by the young

man, who not long afterwards found a more willing mind in her younger

sister; and Lady Russell had lamented her refusal; for Charles Musgrove

was the eldest son of a man, whose landed property and general

importance were second in that country, only to Sir Walter's, and of

good character and appearance; and however Lady Russell might have

asked yet for something more, while Anne was nineteen, she would have

rejoiced to see her at twenty-two so respectably removed from the

partialities and injustice of her father's house, and settled so

permanently near herself. But in this case, Anne had left nothing for

advice to do; and though Lady Russell, as satisfied as ever with her

own discretion, never wished the past undone, she began now to have the

anxiety which borders on hopelessness for Anne's being tempted, by some

man of talents and independence, to enter a state for which she held

her to be peculiarly fitted by her warm affections and domestic habits.




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