When last we left Anne sitting with her amorous cousin (what can I say, it's a nineteenth-century thing), Mr. Elliot, at the concert, he had momentarily distracted Anne from her joyful realization that finally, Captain Wentworth's heart seems to be returning to her. But Mr. Elliot is playing the flattery game...
[Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest Captain Wentworth of them all? Please don't make me choose...]
Persuasion, Ch20, continues:
"The name of Anne Elliot...has long had an interesting sound to me." Says the spider to the fly.
"And, if I dared," says he, "I would breathe my wishes that the name might never change." Put a cork in it, Mr. Elliot.
Anne has no wish to drink the KoolAid. She only wants THE ONE. But how to escape the suffocating circle of her party?
Finally Anne speaks with Capt W, who is once again reserved. No sooner does he warm up when Mr. Elliot barges in. Grrrr!
Result: Capt W says he's outta there. "Is not this song worth staying for?" says Anne, suddenly realizing he's jealous.
"No!" says he, "there is nothing worth my staying for." And with that he's gone. Ouch. The man is definitely green-eyed.
Jealous! "For a moment the gratification was exquisite." And yet...without text or tweet, "How was the truth to reach him?"
Mrs. Smith tells Anne that everyone thinks Anne will marry Mr. Elliot, & she hopes Anne will influence him on her behalf.
Mrs. Smith encourages Anne to marry Mr. Elliot, but when Anne says no way, Mrs. Smith sings a different tune.
It seems that Mrs. Smith and her late husband were close with Mr. Elliot, but he abandoned her after Mr. Smith's death.
Mr. Elliot is executor of Mr. Smith's estate, yet refuses to disentangle Mrs. Smith's desperate financial affairs. Dog.
Mr. Elliot is "a cold-blooded being," says she. (Hello, weren't you trying to get Anne to marry him a minute ago??)
Mrs. Smith says that although Mr. Elliot fell in love w/Anne, his 1st motivation to reconcile w/her family was mercenary.
Mr. Elliot fears that Eliz's friend Mrs. Clay will marry Sir Walter. And if she has a son, HE will be the next Sir Walter.
Anne shudders to think that if not for her own pre-engaged heart, she might have been persuaded to marry that duplicitous dog.
Anxious to find out how this triangle of Anne, Captain Wentworth, and Mr. Elliot resolves itself in a Twitter-less, social-networking-devoid world?
I'll be tweeting the final chapters after I return from my travels on July 9th.
Till then, be happy, be healthy, and be persuaded to read Jane!
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