“Indeed you are mistaken there, sir; I should never augur want of spirit from Captain Benwick’s manners.  I thought them particularly pleasing, and I will answer for it, they would generally please.”

“Well, well, ladies are the best judges; but James Benwick is rather too piano for me; and though very likely it is all our partiality, Sophy and I cannot help thinking Frederick’s manners better than his.  There is something about Frederick more to our taste.”

Anne was caught.  She had only meant to oppose the too common idea of spirit and gentleness being incompatible with each other, not at all to represent Captain Benwick’s manners as the very best that could possibly be; and, after a little hesitation, she was beginning to say, “I was not entering into any comparison of the two friends,” but the Admiral interrupted her with—­

“And the thing is certainly true.  It is not a mere bit of gossip.  We have it from Frederick himself.  His sister had a letter from him yesterday, in which he tells us of it, and he had just had it in a letter from Harville, written upon the spot, from Uppercross.  I fancy they are all at Uppercross.”

This was an opportunity which Anne could not resist; she said, therefore, “I hope, Admiral, I hope there is nothing in the style of Captain Wentworth’s letter to make you and Mrs Croft particularly uneasy.  It did seem, last autumn, as if there were an attachment between him and Louisa Musgrove; but I hope it may be understood to have worn out on each side equally, and without violence.  I hope his letter does not breathe the spirit of an ill-used man.”

“Not at all, not at all; there is not an oath or a murmur from beginning to end.”

Anne looked down to hide her smile.

“No, no; Frederick is not a man to whine and complain; he has too much spirit for that.  If the girl likes another man better, it is very fit she should have him.”

“Certainly.  But what I mean is, that I hope there is nothing in Captain Wentworth’s manner of writing to make you suppose he thinks himself ill-used by his friend, which might appear, you know, without its being absolutely said.  I should be very sorry that such a friendship as has subsisted between him and Captain Benwick should be destroyed, or even wounded, by a circumstance of this sort.”

“Yes, yes, I understand you.  But there is nothing at all of that nature in the letter.  He does not give the least fling at Benwick; does not so much as say, `I wonder at it, I have a reason of my own for wondering at it.’  No, you would not guess, from his way of writing, that he had ever thought of this Miss (what’s her name?) for himself.  He very handsomely hopes they will be happy together; and there is nothing very unforgiving in that, I think.”

Anne did not receive the perfect conviction which the Admiral meant to convey, but it would have been useless to press the enquiry farther.  She therefore satisfied herself with common-place remarks or quiet attention, and the Admiral had it all his own way.