tch it; a heart, in
short, for any pleasing young woman who came in his way, excepting Anne
Elliot. This was his only secret exception, when he said to his
sister, in answer to her suppositions:--

"Yes, here I am, Sophia, quite ready to make a foolish match. Anybody
between fifteen and thirty may have me for asking. A little beauty,
and a few smiles, and a few compliments to the navy, and I am a lost
man. Should not this be enough for a sailor, who has had no society
among women to make him nice?"

He said it, she knew, to be contradicted. His bright proud eye spoke
the conviction that he was nice; and Anne Elliot was not out of his
thoughts, when he more seriously described the woman he should wish to
meet with. "A strong mind, with sweetness of manner," made the first
and the last of the description.

"That is the woman I want," said he. "Something a little inferior I
shall of course put up with, but it must not be much. If I am a fool,
I shall be a fool indeed, for I have thought on the subject more than
most men."

Chapter 8

From this time Captain Wentworth and Anne Elliot were repeatedly in the
same circle. They were soon dining in company together at Mr
Musgrove's, for the little boy's state could no longer supply his aunt
with a pretence for absenting herself; and this was but the beginning
of other dinings and other meetings.

Whether former feelings were to be renewed must be brought to the
proof; former times must undoubtedly be brought to the recollection of
each; they could not but be reverted to; the year of their engagement
could not but be named by him, in the little narratives or descriptions
which conversation called forth. His profession qualified him, his
disposition lead him, to talk; and "That was in the year six;" "That
happened before I went to sea in the year six," occurred in the course
of the first evening they spent together: and though his voice did not
falter, and though she had no reason to suppose his eye wandering
towards her while he spoke, Anne felt the utter impossibility, from her
knowledge of his mind, that he could be unvisited by remembrance any
more than herself. There must be the same immediate association of
thought, though she was very far from conceiving it to be of equal pain.

They had no conversation together, no intercourse but what the
commonest civility required. Once so much to each other! Now nothing!
There had been a time, when of all the