I arrived."

"I know you did; I know it all perfectly, but--"

"Indeed, Mrs Smith, we must not expect to get real information in such
a line. Facts or opinions which are to pass through the hands of so
many, to be misconceived by folly in one, and ignorance in another, can
hardly have much truth left."

"Only give me a hearing. You will soon be able to judge of the general
credit due, by listening to some particulars which you can yourself
immediately contradict or confirm. Nobody supposes that you were his
first inducement. He had seen you indeed, before he came to Bath, and
admired you, but without knowing it to be you. So says my historian,
at least. Is this true? Did he see you last summer or autumn,
'somewhere down in the west,' to use her own words, without knowing it
to be you?"

"He certainly did. So far it is very true. At Lyme. I happened to be
at Lyme."

"Well," continued Mrs Smith, triumphantly, "grant my friend the credit
due to the establishment of the first point asserted. He saw you then
at Lyme, and liked you so well as to be exceedingly pleased to meet
with you again in Camden Place, as Miss Anne Elliot, and from that
moment, I have no doubt, had a double motive in his visits there. But
there was another, and an earlier, which I will now explain. If there
is anything in my story which you know to be either false or
improbable, stop me. My account states, that your sister's friend, the
lady now staying with you, whom I have heard you mention, came to Bath
with Miss Elliot and Sir Walter as long ago as September (in short when
they first came themselves), and has been staying there ever since;
that she is a clever, insinuating, handsome woman, poor and plausible,
and altogether such in situation and manner, as to give a general idea,
among Sir Walter's acquaintance, of her meaning to be Lady Elliot, and
as general a surprise that Miss Elliot should be apparently, blind to
the danger."

Here Mrs Smith paused a moment; but Anne had not a word to say, and she
continued--

"This was the light in which it appeared to those who knew the family,
long before you returned to it; and Colonel Wallis had his eye upon
your father enough to be sensible of it, though he did not then visit
in Camden Place; but his regard for Mr Elliot gave him an interest in
watching all that was going on there, and when Mr Elliot came to Bath
for a day or two, as he happened to do a little before Christmas,
Colo