of him she could discern Mr Smith to have been a man
of warm feelings, easy temper, careless habits, and not strong
understanding, much more amiable than his friend, and very unlike him,
led by him, and probably despised by him. Mr Elliot, raised by his
marriage to great affluence, and disposed to every gratification of
pleasure and vanity which could be commanded without involving himself,
(for with all his self-indulgence he had become a prudent man), and
beginning to be rich, just as his friend ought to have found himself to
be poor, seemed to have had no concern at all for that friend's
probable finances, but, on the contrary, had been prompting and
encouraging expenses which could end only in ruin; and the Smiths
accordingly had been ruined.

The husband had died just in time to be spared the full knowledge of
it. They had previously known embarrassments enough to try the
friendship of their friends, and to prove that Mr Elliot's had better
not be tried; but it was not till his death that the wretched state of
his affairs was fully known. With a confidence in Mr Elliot's regard,
more creditable to his feelings than his judgement, Mr Smith had
appointed him the executor of his will; but Mr Elliot would not act,
and the difficulties and distress which this refusal had heaped on her,
in addition to the inevitable sufferings of her situation, had been
such as could not be related without anguish of spirit, or listened to
without corresponding indignation.

Anne was shewn some letters of his on the occasion, answers to urgent
applications from Mrs Smith, which all breathed the same stern
resolution of not engaging in a fruitless trouble, and, under a cold
civility, the same hard-hearted indifference to any of the evils it
might bring on her. It was a dreadful picture of ingratitude and
inhumanity; and Anne felt, at some moments, that no flagrant open crime
could have been worse. She had a great deal to listen to; all the
particulars of past sad scenes, all the minutiae of distress upon
distress, which in former conversations had been merely hinted at, were
dwelt on now with a natural indulgence. Anne could perfectly
comprehend the exquisite relief, and was only the more inclined to
wonder at the composure of her friend's usual state of mind.

There was one circumstance in the history of her grievances of
particular irritation. She had good reason to believe that some
property of her husband in the West Indies,