Chapter: He was not Mr Wentworth, the former curate of Monkford, however
suspicious appearances may be, but a Captain Frederick Wentworth, his
brother, who being made commander in consequence of the action off St
Domingo, and not immediately employed, had come into Somersetshire, in
the summer of 1806; and having no parent living, found a home for half
a year at Monkford.  He was, at that time, a remarkably fine young man,
with a great deal of intelligence, spirit, and brilliancy; and Anne an
extremely pretty girl, with gentleness, modesty, taste, and feeling.
Half the sum of attraction, on either side, might have been enough, for
he had nothing to do, and she had hardly anybody to love; but the
encounter of such lavish recommendations could not fail.  They were
gradually acquainted, and when acquainted, rapidly and deeply in love.
It would be difficult to say which had seen highest perfection in the
other, or which had been the happiest: she, in receiving his
declarations and proposals, or he in having them accepted.

A short period of exquisite felicity followed, and but a short one.
Troubles soon arose.  Sir Walter, on being applied to, without actually
withholding his consent, or saying it should never be, gave it all the
negative of great astonishment, great coldness, great silence, and a
professed resolution of doing nothing for his daughter.  He thought it
a very degrading alliance; and Lady Russell, though with more tempered
and pardonable pride, received it as a most unfortunate one.

Anne Elliot, with all her claims of birth, beauty, and mind, to throw
herself away at nineteen; involve herself at nineteen in an engagement
with a young man, who had nothing but himself to recommend him, and no
hopes of attaining affluence, but in the chances of a most uncertain
profession, and no connexions to secure even his farther rise in the
profession, would be, indeed, a throwing away, which she grieved to
think of!  Anne Elliot, so young; known to so few, to be snatched off
by a stranger without alliance or fortune; or rather sunk by him into a
state of most wearing, anxious, youth-killing dependence!  It must not
be, if by any fair interference of friendship, any representations from
one who had almost a mother's love, and mother's rights, it would be
prevented.

Captain Wentworth had no fortune.  He had been lucky in his profession;
but spending freely, what had come freely, had realized nothing.  But
he was confident that he should soon be rich: full of life and ardour,
he knew that he should soon have a ship, and soon be on a station that
would lead to everything he wanted.  He had always been lucky; he knew
he should be so still.  Such confidence, powerful in its own warmth,
and bewitching in the wit which often expressed it, must have been
enough for Anne; but Lady Russell saw it very differently.  His
sanguine temper, and fearlessness of mind, operated very differently on
her.  She saw in it but an aggravation of the evil.  It only added a
dangerous character to himself.  He was brilliant, he was headstrong.
Lady Russell had little taste for wit, and of anything approaching to
imprudence a horror.  She deprecated the connexion in every light.

Such opposition, as these feelings produced, was more than Anne could
combat.  Young and gentle as she was, it might yet have been possible
to withstand her father's ill-will, though unsoftened by one kind word
or look on the part of her sister; but Lady Russell, whom she had
always loved and relied on, could not, with such steadiness of opinion,
and such tenderness of manner, be continually advising her in vain.
She was persuaded to believe the engagement a wrong thing:  indiscreet,
improper, hardly capable of success, and not deserving it.  But it was
not a merely selfish caution, under which she acted, in putting an end
to it.  Had she not imagined herself consulting his good, even more
than her own, she could hardly have given him up.  The belief of being
prudent, and self-denying, principally for his advantage, was her chief
consolation, under the misery of a parting, a final parting; and every
consolation was required, for she had to encounter all the additional
pain of opinions, on his side, totally unconvinced and unbending, and
of his feeling himself ill used by so forced a relinquishment.  He had
left the country in consequence.

A few months had seen the beginning and the end of their acquaintance;
but not with a few months ended Anne's share of suffering from it.  Her
attachment and regrets had, for a long time, clouded every enjoyment of
youth, and an early loss of bloom and spirits had been their lasting
effect.

More than seven years were gone since this little history of sorrowful
interest had reached its close; and time had softened down much,
perhaps nearly all of peculiar attachment to him, but she had been too
dependent on time alone; no aid had been given in change of place
(except in one visit to Bath soon after the rupture), or in any novelty
or enlargement of society.  No one had ever come within the Kellynch
circle, who could bear a comparison with Frederick Wentworth, as he
stood in her memory.  No second attachment, the only thoroughly
natural, happy, and sufficient cure, at her time of life, had been
possible to the nice tone of her mind, the fastidiousness of her taste,
in the small limits of the society around them.  She had been
solicited, when about two-and-twenty, to change her name, by the young
man, who not long afterwards found a more willing mind in her younger
sister; and Lady Russell had lamented her refusal; for Charles Musgrove
was the eldest son of a man, whose landed property and general
importance were second in that country, only to Sir Walter's, and of
good character and appearance; and however Lady Russell might have
asked yet for something more, while Anne was nineteen, she would have
rejoiced to see her at twenty-two so respectably removed from the
partialities and injustice of her father's house, and settled so
permanently near herself.  But in this case, Anne had left nothing for
advice to do; and though Lady Russell, as satisfied as ever with her
own discretion, never wished the past undone, she began now to have the
anxiety which borders on hopelessness for Anne's being tempted, by some
man of talents and independence, to enter a state for which she held
her to be peculiarly fitted by her warm affections and domestic habits.

They knew not each other's opinion, either its constancy or its change,
on the one leading point of Anne's conduct, for the subject was never
alluded to; but Anne, at seven-and-twenty, thought very differently
from what she had been made to think at nineteen.  She did not blame
Lady Russell, she did not blame herself for having been guided by her;
but she felt that were any young person, in similar circumstances, to
apply to her for counsel, they would never receive any of such certain
immediate wretchedness, such uncertain future good.  She was persuaded
that under every disadvantage of disapprobation at home, and every
anxiety attending his profession, all their probable fears, delays, and
disappointments, she should yet have been a happier woman in
maintaining the engagement, than she had been in the sacrifice of it;
and this, she fully believed, had the usual share, had even more than
the usual share of all such solicitudes and suspense been theirs,
without reference to the actual results of their case, which, as it
happened, would have bestowed earlier prosperity than could be
reasonably calculated on.  All his sanguine expectations, all his
confidence had been justified.  His genius and ardour had seemed to
foresee and to command his prosperous path.  He had, very soon after
their engagement ceased, got employ: and all that he had told her would
follow, had taken place.  He had distinguished himself, and early
gained the other step in rank, and must now, by successive captures,
have made a handsome fortune.  She had only navy lists and newspapers
for her authority, but she could not doubt his being rich; and, in
favour of his constancy, she had no reason to believe him married.

How eloquent could Anne Elliot have been! how eloquent, at least, were
her wishes on the side of early warm attachment, and a cheerful
confidence in futurity, against that over-anxious caution which seems
to insult exertion and distrust Providence!  She had been forced into
prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the
natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.

With all these circumstances, recollections and feelings, she could not
hear that Captain Wentworth's sister was likely to live at Kellynch
without a revival of former pain; and many a stroll, and many a sigh,
were necessary to dispel the agitation of the idea.  She often told
herself it was folly, before she could harden her nerves sufficiently
to feel the continual discussion of the Crofts and their business no
evil.  She was assisted, however, by that perfect indifference and
apparent unconsciousness, among the only three of her own friends in
the secret of the past, which seemed almost to deny any recollection of
it.  She could do justice to the superiority of Lady Russell's motives
in this, over those of her father and Elizabeth; she could honour all
the better feelings of her calmness; but the general air of oblivion
among them was highly important from whatever it sprung; and in the
event of Admiral Croft's really taking Kellynch Hall, she rejoiced anew
over the conviction which had always been most grateful to her, of the
past being known to those three only among her connexions, by whom no
syllable, she believed, would ever be whispered, and in the trust that
among his, the brother only with whom he had been residing, had
received any information of their short-lived engagement.  That brother
had been long removed from the country and being a sensible man, and,
moreover, a single man at the time, she had a fond dependence on no
human creature's having heard of it from him.

The sister, Mrs Croft, had then been out of England, accompanying her
husband on a foreign station, and her own sister, Mary, had been at
school while it all occurred; and never admitted by the pride of some,
and the delicacy of others, to the smallest knowledge of it afterwards.

With these supports, she hoped that the acquaintance between herself
and the Crofts, which, with Lady Russell, still resident in Kellynch,
and Mary fixed only three miles off, must be anticipated, need not
involve any particular awkwardness.

 The narrator, however, doesn't leave us in suspense for long, and helpfully explains that it is not Mr. Wentworth the curate for whom Anne is blushing, but his brother, Captain Frederick Wentworth. Cue flashback: seven years previously, in 1806, the dashing young Captain Wentworth had come to town and, within a few months, he and Anne had fallen head over heels in love with each other. While the Captain had impressed Anne with his personal charisma, Sir Walter and Lady Russell were less impressed with his empty wallet and lack of friends in high places to help fill it. Eventually, Lady Russell had convinced Anne that it was best for the both of them if they parted; at the time Anne herself believed it, but the spurned Captain Wentworth left town in a huff. In the long years that followed, Anne had remained stuck in her small hometown, never meeting anyone who held a candle to her lost Captain. Three years after the failed engagement, Anne had received another proposal, this time from a local boy: Charles Musgrove, second place in the county's Rich and Famous rankings ; she turned him down. Anne has serious hindsight issues, as now she believes it would have been better to follow her heart and keep the engagement. Twisting the knife, Captain Wentworth has been just as successful as he said he would be, and is now comfortably rich - and, as far as Anne knows, still unmarried. We return to the present, where with all these complicated emotions roiling around internally, Anne works hard to keep a stiff upper lip in the presence of her family, aided by the fact that they hardly notice her anyway.

