Such language might almost be taken to be a proposal; but Anne was too much interested in watching Captain Wentworth to pay much attention to it.

She had still in mind the words which her sometime lover had spoken at the concert, when a visit she had paid to an invalid friend, an old schoolfellow of hers called Mrs. Smith, gave her complete enlightenment as to the character and present objects of Mr. Elliot.  Mrs. Smith, who was a widow, and whose husband had been a bosom friend of Mr. Elliot’s, described him as “a man without heart or conscience, a designing, wary, cold-blooded being, who thinks only of himself; who for his own interest or ease would be guilty of any cruelty, or any treachery that could be perpetrated without risk of damaging his general character.”  She told how he had encouraged her husband, to whom he was under great obligations, to indulge in the most ruinous expense, and then, on his death, caused her endless difficulties and distress by refusing to act as his executor.  She also informed Anne that he had married his first wife, whom he treated badly, entirely on account of her fortune, and that, though among the present reasons for continuing the acquaintance with his relations was a genuine attachment to herself, his original intention in seeking a reconciliation with Sir Walter had been to secure for himself the reversion of the baronetcy by preventing the holder of the title from falling into the snares of Mrs. Clay.

The next day a party of the Musgroves appeared at Camden Place.  Mrs. Musgrove, senior, had some old friends at Bath whom she wanted to see; Mrs. Charles Musgrove could not bear to be left behind in any excursion which her husband was taking; Henrietta, who had arrived at an understanding with Mr. Charles Hayter, had come to buy wedding clothes for herself and Louisa; and Captain Harville had come on business.  It was on a visit to the Musgroves, who were stopping at the White Hart Hotel, that Anne had a momentous conversation with the last-named person.  The captain had been reverting to the topic of his friend Benwick’s engagement, and Anne had been saying that women did not forget as readily as men.

“No, no,” said Harville, “it is not man’s nature to forget.  I will not allow it to be more man’s nature than woman’s to be inconstant and to forget those they do love or have loved.  I believe the reverse.  I believe in a true analogy between our bodily frames and our mental; and that as our bodily frames are stronger than yours, so are our feelings.”

“Your feelings may be the stronger,” replied Anne, “but the same spirit of analogy will authorise me to assert that ours are the more tender.  Man is more robust than woman, but he is not longer lived; which exactly explains my view of the nature of their attachment.”

Captain Wentworth, who was sitting down at a writing-table in another part of the room, engaged in correspondence, seemed very much interested in this conversation; and a few minutes later he placed before Anne, with eyes of glowing entreaty, a letter addressed to “Miss A. E.”