They found Captain Harville a tall, dark man, with a sensible, benevolent countenance:  a little lame, but unaffected, warm and obliging.  Mrs. Harville, a degree less polished than her husband, seemed to have the same good feelings and cordiality; while Captain Benwick, who was the youngest of the three naval officers and a comparatively little man, had a pleasing face and a melancholic air, just as he ought to have.  He had been engaged to Captain Harville’s sister, and was now mourning her loss.  They had been a year or two waiting for fortune and promotion.  Fortune came, his prize-money as lieutenant being great; promotion, too, came at last; but Fanny Harville did not live to know it.  She had died the preceding summer while he was at sea; and the friendship between him and the Harvilles having been augmented by the event which closed all their views of alliance, he was now living with them entirely.  A man of retiring manners and of sedentary pursuits, with a decided taste for reading, he was drawn a good deal to Anne Elliot during this excursion, and talked to her of poetry, of Scott and Byron, of “Marmion” and “The Lady of the Lake,” of “The Giaour” and “The Bride of Abydos.”  He repeated with such feeling the various lines of Byron which imaged a broken heart, or a mind destroyed by wretchedness, and looked so entirely as if he meant to be understood, that Anne ventured to recommend to him a larger allowance of prose in his daily study.

Another interesting person whom the Uppercross party met at Lyme was Mr. Elliot.  He did not recognise Anne and her friends, or did they till he had left the town find out who he was; but he was obviously struck with Anne, and gazed at her with a degree of earnest admiration which she could not be insensible of.  She was looking remarkably well, her very regular, very pretty features having the bloom and freshness of youth restored by the fine wind which had been blowing on her complexion, and by the animation of eye which it had also produced.

It was evident that the gentleman admired her exceedingly.  Captain Wentworth looked round at her, in a way which showed his noticing of it.  He gave her a momentary glance, a glance of brightness, which seemed to say:  “That man is struck with you; and even I, at this moment, see something like Anne Elliot again.”

But the folly of Louisa Musgrove, and the consequences that attended it, soon obliterated from Anne’s memory all such recollections as these.  Louisa, who was walking with Captain Wentworth, persuaded him to jump her down the steps on the Lower Cob.  Contrary to his advice, she ran up the steps to be jumped down again; and, being too precipitate by a second, fell on the pavement and was taken up senseless.  Fortunately, no bones were broken, the only injury was to the head; and Captain and Mrs. Harville insisting on her being taken to their house, she recovered health so steadily that before Anne and Lady Russell left Kellynch Lodge for Bath there was talk of the possibility of her being able to be removed to Uppercross.