She spoke, and seemed only to offend. Elizabeth could not conceive how

such an absurd suspicion should occur to her, and indignantly answered

for each party's perfectly knowing their situation.

"Mrs Clay," said she, warmly, "never forgets who she is; and as I am

rather better acquainted with her sentiments than you can be, I can

assure you, that upon the subject of marriage they are particularly

nice, and that she reprobates all inequality of condition and rank more

strongly than most people. And as to my father, I really should not

have thought that he, who has kept himself single so long for our

sakes, need be suspected now. If Mrs Clay were a very beautiful woman,

I grant you, it might be wrong to have her so much with me; not that

anything in the world, I am sure, would induce my father to make a

degrading match, but he might be rendered unhappy. But poor Mrs Clay

who, with all her merits, can never have been reckoned tolerably

pretty, I really think poor Mrs Clay may be staying here in perfect

safety. One would imagine you had never heard my father speak of her

personal misfortunes, though I know you must fifty times. That tooth

of her's and those freckles. Freckles do not disgust me so very much

as they do him. I have known a face not materially disfigured by a

few, but he abominates them. You must have heard him notice Mrs Clay's

freckles."

"There is hardly any personal defect," replied Anne, "which an

agreeable manner might not gradually reconcile one to."

"I think very differently," answered Elizabeth, shortly; "an agreeable

manner may set off handsome features, but can never alter plain ones.

However, at any rate, as I have a great deal more at stake on this

point than anybody else can have, I think it rather unnecessary in you

to be advising me."

Anne had done; glad that it was over, and not absolutely hopeless of

doing good. Elizabeth, though resenting the suspicion, might yet be

made observant by it.

The last office of the four carriage-horses was to draw Sir Walter,

Miss Elliot, and Mrs Clay to Bath. The party drove off in very good

spirits; Sir Walter prepared with condescending bows for all the

afflicted tenantry and cottagers who might have had a hint to show

themselves, and Anne walked up at the same time, in a sort of desolate

tranquillity, to the Lodge, where she was to spend the first week.

Her friend was not in better spirits than herself. Lady Russell felt

this break-up of the family exceedingly. Their respectability was as

dear to her as her own, and a daily intercourse had become precious by

habit. It was painful to look upon their deserted grounds, and still

worse to anticipate the new hands they were to fall into; and to escape

the solitariness and the melancholy of so altered a village, and be out

of the way when Admiral and Mrs Croft first arrived, she had determined

to make her own absence from home begin when she must give up Anne.

Accordingly their removal was made together, and Anne was set down at

Uppercross Cottage, in the first stage of Lady Russell's journey.




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