der it as the certain wish of every being who could hope to
influence you! Even if your own feelings were reluctant or indifferent,
to consider what powerful support would be his! Was it not enough to
make the fool of me which I appeared? How could I look on without agony?
Was not the very sight of the friend who sat behind you; was not the
recollection of what had been, the knowledge of her influence, the
indelible, immovable impression of what persuasion had once done--was it
not all against me?'

'You should have distinguished,' replied Anne. 'You should not have
suspected me now; the case so different, and my age so different. If I
was wrong in yielding to persuasion once, remember it was to persuasion
exerted on the side of safety, not of risk. When I yielded, I thought it
was to duty; but no duty could be called in aid here. In marrying a man
indifferent to me, all risk would have been incurred, and all duty
violated.'

'Perhaps I ought to have reasoned thus,' he replied; 'but I could not. I
could not derive benefit from the late knowledge I had acquired of your
character. I could not bring it into play; it was overwhelmed, buried,
lost in those earlier feelings which I had been smarting under year after
year. I could think of you only as one who had yielded, who had given me
up, who had been influenced by anyone rather than by me. I saw you with
the very person who had guided you in that year of misery. I had no
reason to believe her of less authority now. The force of habit was to
be added.'

'I should have thought,' said Anne, 'that my manner to yourself might
have spared you much or all of this.'

'No, no! Your manner might be only the ease which your engagement to
another man would give. I left you in this belief; and yet--I was
determined to see you again. My spirits rallied with the morning, and I
felt that I had still a motive for remaining here. The Admiral's news,
indeed, was a revulsion; since that moment I have been divided what to
do, and had it been confirmed, this would have been my last day in Bath.'

There was time for all this to pass, with such interruptions only as
enhanced the charm of the communication, and Bath could hardly contain
any other two beings at once so rationally and so rapturously happy as
during that evening occupied the sofa of Mrs. Croft's drawing-room in Gay
Street.

Captain Wentworth had taken care to meet the Admiral as he returned into
the house, to