ren’s Reviews > Persuasion > Status Update

"Mrs Clay was very pleasant, and very smiling, but her courtesies and smiles were more a matter of course.
They were evidentially in excellent spirits, and she was soon to listen to the causes. They had no inclination to listen to her. They had only a few faint enquires to make, before the talk must be all their own. Uppercross excited no interest, Kellynch very little: it was all Bath."

"Sir Walter had taken a very good house in Camden Place, a lofty dignified situation, such as becomes a man of consequence; and both he and both he and Elizabeth were settled there, much to their satisfaction.
Anne entered it with a sinking heart, anticipating an imprisonment of many months, and anxiously saying to herself, 'Oh! when shall I leave you again?'"

"Lady R was in a state of very agreeable curiosity and perplexity about Mr Elliot, already recanting her previous statement, as she had a great wish to see him. If he really sought to reconcile himself like a dutiful branch, he must be forgiven for having dismembered himself from the paternal tree.
Anne was not animated to an equal pitch by the circumstances, but she felt she would rather see him again than not."

"Anne did not share these feelings. She persisted in a very determined, though very silent disinclination for Bath; caught the first dim view of the extensive buildings, smoking in rain, without any wish of seeing them better; for who would be glad to see her when she arrived? And looked back, with fond regret, to the bustles of Uppercross and the seclusion of Kellynch."

"Everybody has their taste in noises as well as in other matters; and sounds are quite innoxious, or most distressing, by their sort rather than their quantity. Amidst the dash of carriages, the heavy rumble of carts, the bawling of newspapermen and milkmen, and the ceaseless clink of pattens, she made no complain. No, these were the noises which belonged to winter pleasures; her spirits rose under their influence."

"Anne, judging from her own temperament, would have deemed such a domestic hurricane a bad restorative of the nerves, which Louisa's illness must have so greatly shaken. But Mrs Musgrove concluded a short recapitulation of what she had suffered herself by observing, with a happy glance round the room, that after all she had gone through, nothing was so likely to do her good as a little quiet cheerfulness at home."

"They were both occasionally thinking of him. Lady Russell could not hear the doorbell without feeling that it might be his herald; nor could Anne return from any stroll of solitary indulgence in her father's grounds, or any visit of charity in the village, without wondering whether she might see him or hear of him. Cpt Benwick came not, however. He was either less disposed than Charles imagined, or he was too shy;"

"As Louisa improved, Wentworth had improved, and he was now quite a different creature from what he had been the first week. He had not seen Louisa; and was so extremely fearful of any ill consequence to her from an interview, that he did not press for it at all; and, on the contrary, seemed to have a plan of going away for a week, or ten days, till her head was stronger."

"'So do I, Anne,' said Charles. 'I am sure Lady Russell would like him. He is just Lady Russell's sort. Give him a book, and he will read all day long.'
'Yes, that he will!' Exclaimed Mary, tauntingly. 'He will sit pouring over his book, and not know when a person speaks to him or when one drops one's scissors, or anything that happens. Do you think Lady Russell would like that?'
The lady could not help laughing."

"'He walked with me, sometimes from one end of the sands to the other, without saying a word. He is not at all a well-bred young man. I am sure you will not like him.'
'There we differ, Mary,' said Anne. 'I think Lady Russell would like him. I think she would be so much pleased with his mind, that she would very soon see no deficiency in his manner.'"