‘The Admiral, Madam, was this morning confidently informed that you were—upon my soul, I am quite at a loss, ashamed (breathing and speaking quickly)—the awkwardness of giving information of this kind to one of the parties—you can be at no loss to understand me. It was very confidently said that Mr. Elliot—that everything was settled in the family for a union between Mr. Elliot and yourself. It was added that you were to live at Kellynch—that Kellynch was to be given up. This the Admiral knew could not be correct. But it occurred to him that it might be the wish of the parties. And my commission from him, Madam, is to say, that if the family wish is such, his lease of Kellynch shall be cancelled, and he and my sister will provide themselves with another home, without imagining themselves to be doing anything which under similar circumstances would not be done for them. This is all, Madam. A very few words in reply from you will be sufficient. That I should be the person commissioned on this subject is extraordinary! and believe me, Madam, it is no less painful. A very few words, however, will put an end to the awkwardness and distress we may both be feeling.’
Anne spoke a word or two, but they were unintelligible; and before she could command herself, he
added, ‘If you will only tell me that the Admiral may address a line to Sir Walter, it will be enough. Pronounce only the words, he may, and I shall immediately follow him with your message.’
‘No, Sir,’ said Anne; ‘there is no message. You are misin—the Admiral is misinformed. I do justice to the kindness of his intentions, but he is quite mistaken. There is no truth in any such report.’
He was a moment silent. She turned her eyes towards him for the first time since his re-entering the room. His colour was varying, and he was looking at her with all the power and keenness which she believed no other eyes than his possessed.
‘No truth in any such report?’ he repeated. ‘No truth in any part of it?’
‘None.’
He had been standing by a chair, enjoying the relief of leaning on it, or of playing with it. He now sat down, drew it a little nearer to her, and looked with an expression which had something more than penetration in it—something softer. Her countenance did not discourage. It was a silent but a very powerful dialogue; on his supplication, on hers acceptance. Still a little nearer, and a hand taken and pressed; and ‘Anne, my own dear Anne!’ bursting forth in all the fulness of exquisite feeling,—and all suspense and indecision were over. They were re-united. They were restored to all that had been lost. They were carried back to the past with only an increase of attachment and confidence, and
only such a flutter of present delight as made them little fit for the interruption of Mrs. Croft when she joined them not long afterwards. She, probably, in the observations of the next ten minutes saw something to suspect; and though it was hardly possible for a woman of her description to wish the mantua-maker had imprisoned her longer, she might be very likely wishing for some excuse to run about the house, some storm to break the windows above, or a summons to the Admiral’s shoemaker below. Fortune favoured them all, however, in another way, in a gentle, steady rain, just happily set in as the Admiral returned and Anne rose to go. She was earnestly invited to stay dinner. A note was despatched to Camden Place, and she staid—staid till ten at night; and during that time the husband and wife, either by the wife’s contrivance, or by simply going on in their usual way, were frequently out of the room together—gone upstairs to hear a noise, or downstairs to settle their accounts, or upon the landing to trim the lamp. And these precious moments were turned to so good an account that all the most anxious feelings of the past were gone through. Before they parted at night, Anne had the felicity of being assured that in the first place (so far from being altered for the worse), she had gained inexpressibly in personal loveliness; and that as to character, hers was now fixed on his mind as perfection itself, maintaining the just medium of fortitude and gentleness—that
he had never ceased to love and prefer her, though it had been only at Uppercross that he had learnt to do her justice, and only at Lyme that he had begun to understand his own feelings; that at Lyme he had received lessons of more than one kind—the passing admiration of Mr. Elliot had at least roused him, and the scene on the Cobb, and at Captain Harville’s, had fixed her superiority. In his preceding attempts to attach himself to Louisa Musgrove (the attempts of anger and pique), he protested that he had continually felt the impossibility of really caring for Louisa, though till that day, till the leisure for reflection which followed it, he had not understood the perfect excellence of the mind with which Louisa’s could so ill bear comparison; or the perfect, the unrivalled hold it possessed over his own. There he had learnt to distinguish between the steadiness of principle and the obstinacy of self-will, between the darings of heedlessness and the resolution of a collected mind; there he had seen everything to exalt in his estimation the woman he had lost, and there had begun to deplore the pride, the folly, the madness of resentment, which had kept him from trying to regain her when thrown in his way. From that period to the present had his penance been the most severe. He had no sooner been free from the horror and remorse attending the first few days of Louisa’s accident, no sooner had begun to feel himself alive again, than he had begun to feel himself, though alive, not at liberty.