so long for our sakes, need be suspected now. If Mrs Clay were
a very beautiful woman, I grant you, it might be wrong to have her
so much with me; not that anything in the world, I am sure,
would induce my father to make a degrading match, but he might
be rendered unhappy. But poor Mrs Clay who, with all her merits,
can never have been reckoned tolerably pretty, I really think poor
Mrs Clay may be staying here in perfect safety. One would imagine
you had never heard my father speak of her personal misfortunes,
though I know you must fifty times. That tooth of her's
and those freckles. Freckles do not disgust me so very much
as they do him. I have known a face not materially disfigured by a few,
but he abominates them. You must have heard him notice
Mrs Clay's freckles."

"There is hardly any personal defect," replied Anne,
"which an agreeable manner might not gradually reconcile one to."

"I think very differently," answered Elizabeth, shortly;
"an agreeable manner may set off handsome features, but can never
alter plain ones. However, at any rate, as I have a great deal more
at stake on this point than anybody else can have, I think it
rather unnecessary in you to be advising me."

Anne had done; glad that it was over, and not absolutely hopeless
of doing good. Elizabeth, though resenting the suspicion,
might yet be made observant by it.

The last office of the four carriage-horses was to draw Sir Walter,
Miss Elliot, and Mrs Clay to Bath. The party drove off in very good spirits;
Sir Walter prepared with condescending bows for all the afflicted