when the child might be at rest for the night, and kindly urged her
to let him come and fetch her, but she was quite unpersuadable;
and this being the case, she had ere long the pleasure of seeing them
set off together in high spirits. They were gone, she hoped,
to be happy, however oddly constructed such happiness might seem;
as for herself, she was left with as many sensations of comfort,
as were, perhaps, ever likely to be hers. She knew herself to be
of the first utility to the child; and what was it to her
if Frederick Wentworth were only half a mile distant, making himself
agreeable to others?

She would have liked to know how he felt as to a meeting.
Perhaps indifferent, if indifference could exist under such circumstances.
He must be either indifferent or unwilling. Had he wished
ever to see her again, he need not have waited till this time;
he would have done what she could not but believe that in his place
she should have done long ago, when events had been early giving him
the independence which alone had been wanting.

Her brother and sister came back delighted with their new acquaintance,
and their visit in general. There had been music, singing,
talking, laughing, all that was most agreeable; charming manners
in Captain Wentworth, no shyness or reserve; they seemed all
to know each other perfectly, and he was coming the very next morning
to shoot with Charles. He was to come to breakfast, but not at the Cottage,
though that had been proposed at first; but then he had been pressed
to come to the Great House instead, and he seemed afraid of being
in Mrs Charles Musgrove's way, on account of the child, and therefore,
somehow, they hardly knew how, it ended in Charles's being to meet him
to breakfast at his father's.