cheeks and as she walked along a favourite grove said with a gentle sigh a few months more and he perhaps may be walking here chapter iv he was not mr the former of ford however suspicious appearances may be but a captain his brother who being made com in consequence of the action off st and not employed had come into in the of and having no parent living found a persuasion for half a year at he was at that time a remark 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 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 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 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 though with more tempered and pride received it as a most unfortunate one anne 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 but in the chances of a most uncertain profession and no connections to secure even his farther rise in that profession would be indeed a throwing away which she grieved to think of anne so young known to so few to be snatched off by a stranger without alliance or o rather sunk by him into a state of most wearing youth killing dependence it must not be if by any fa interference of friendship any representations from one had almost a mother s love and mother s rights it would prevented captain had no fortune he had been lu in his profession but spending freely what had come persuasion had nothing but he was confident that he should soon be rich full of life and 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 in the wit which often expressed it most have been enough for anne but lady saw it veiy his sanguine temper and of mind very differently on her she saw in it but an of the evil it only added a dangerous character to himself he was brilliant he was lady had little taste for wit and of anything approaching to a horror she the connection 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 by one kind word or look on the part of her sister but lady whom she had always loved and relied on could not with such of opinion and such tenderness of manner be continually her in vain she was persuaded to believe the engagement a wrong thing 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 and and of his feeling himself ill used by so forced a 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 from it her attachment and regrets had for a and persuasion persuasion long time clouded every enjoyment of youth and an early 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 or in any novelty or of society no one had ever come within the circle who could bear a comparison with 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 of her taste in the small limits of the society around them she had been when about two to change her name by the young man who not long afterwards found a more willing mind in her younger sister and lady had lamented her refusal for charles 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 might have asked yet for something more while anne was nineteen she would have rejoiced to see her at twenty two so removed from the 