To Lady Russell, indeed, she was a most dear and highly valued

god-daughter, favourite, and friend. Lady Russell loved them all; but

it was only in Anne that she could fancy the mother to revive again.

A few years before, Anne Elliot had been a very pretty girl, but her

bloom had vanished early; and as even in its height, her father had

found little to admire in her, (so totally different were her delicate

features and mild dark eyes from his own), there could be nothing in

them, now that she was faded and thin, to excite his esteem. He had

never indulged much hope, he had now none, of ever reading her name in

any other page of his favourite work. All equality of alliance must

rest with Elizabeth, for Mary had merely connected herself with an old

country family of respectability and large fortune, and had therefore

given all the honour and received none: Elizabeth would, one day or

other, marry suitably.

It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she

was ten years before; and, generally speaking, if there has been

neither ill health nor anxiety, it is a time of life at which scarcely

any charm is lost. It was so with Elizabeth, still the same handsome

Miss Elliot that she had begun to be thirteen years ago, and Sir Walter

might be excused, therefore, in forgetting her age, or, at least, be

deemed only half a fool, for thinking himself and Elizabeth as blooming

as ever, amidst the wreck of the good looks of everybody else; for he

could plainly see how old all the rest of his family and acquaintance

were growing. Anne haggard, Mary coarse, every face in the

neighbourhood worsting, and the rapid increase of the crow's foot about

Lady Russell's temples had long been a distress to him.

Elizabeth did not quite equal her father in personal contentment.

Thirteen years had seen her mistress of Kellynch Hall, presiding and

directing with a self-possession and decision which could never have

given the idea of her being younger than she was. For thirteen years

had she been doing the honours, and laying down the domestic law at

home, and leading the way to the chaise and four, and walking

immediately after Lady Russell out of all the drawing-rooms and

dining-rooms in the country. Thirteen winters' revolving frosts had

seen her opening every ball of credit which a scanty neighbourhood

afforded, and thirteen springs shewn their blossoms, as she travelled

up to London with her father, for a few weeks' annual enjoyment of the

great world. She had the remembrance of all this, she had the

consciousness of being nine-and-twenty to give her some regrets and

some apprehensions; she was fully satisfied of being still quite as

handsome as ever, but she felt her approach to the years of danger, and

would have rejoiced to be certain of being properly solicited by

baronet-blood within the next twelvemonth or two. Then might she again

take up the book of books with as much enjoyment as in her early youth,

but now she liked it not. Always to be presented with the date of her

own birth and see no marriage follow but that of a youngest sister,

made the book an evil; and more than once, when her father had left it

open on the table near her, had she closed it, with averted eyes, and

pushed it away.




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