Music Welcome to Snewscast, the podcast designed to help you fall asleep. Find and connect with us on snoozecast.com and on social media at Snewscast. This episode is brought to you by The Storms of Autumn. Tonight we shall read the next part to Persuasion, the last novel fully completed by Jane Austen, published in 1817. The story concerns Anne Elliott, an English woman whose family moves in order to lower their expenses and reduce their debt by renting their home to an admiral and his wife. In the last episode, we find Anne obliged to go on what should be a very awkward walk through the countryside

with her sister Mary, their cousins Henrietta and Luisa, her brother-in-law Charles, and Captain Wentworth. We observe the degree to which Captain Wentworth prizes conviction and loyalty in a woman in reaction to how Anne had allowed herself to be persuaded against him eight years earlier. Their long walk seems random, but when they reach the grounds of the cousin's relations, the haters' home, Henrietta and Charles go in to visit, while the rest of the party stays out in the woods to enjoy the fresh air. And rest quietly, while the others go walking around. She accidentally ends up privy to a conversation between Luisa and Captain Wentworth, where Luisa gives the captain an example of her sister being indecisive

towards her old lover Charles Hater, and the captain uses this as an example of what he most appores. We will pick up in this private conversation. Let's get cozy.

Close your eyes. Relax your body into the softness of your bed. Now take a few deep breaths. when worth continued. It is the worst evil of two yielding and indecisive a character that no influence over it can be depended on. You are never sure of a good impression being durable. Everybody may sway it, but those who would be happy be firm. Here is a nut," said he, catching one down from an upper bow, to exemplify, a beautiful glossy nut which, blessed with original strength, has outlived all the storms of Atom. Not a puncture, not a weak spot anywhere.

This nut, he continued, with playful solemnity, while so many of his brethren have fallen and been trot in underfoot, is still in possession of all the happiness that a hazelnut can be supposed capable of. Then returning to his former earnest tone, my first wish for all whom I am interested in is that they should be firm. If Louisa Musgrove would be beautiful and happy in her November of life, she will cherish all her present powers of mind. He had done and was unanswered. It would have surprised Anne if Louisa could have readily answered such a speech, words of such interest, spoken with such serious warmth, she could imagine what Louisa was feeling. For herself, she feared to move, lest she should be seen. While she remained, a bush of low rambling holly protected her, and they were moving on. Before they were beyond her hearing, however, Luisa spoke again. Mary is good natured enough in many respects, said she. But she does sometimes provoke me excessively by her nonsense and pride. The Elliott Pride. She has a great deal too much of the Elliott Pride. We do so wish that Charles had married Anne instead. I suppose you know he wanted to marry Anne. After a moment's pause, Captain Wentworth said, do you mean that she refused him? Oh, yes, certainly. When did that happen? I do not know exactly for Henrietta

and I were at school at the time,

but I believe about a year before he married Mary.

I wish she had accepted him.

We should all have liked her a great deal better.

And Papa and Mama always think

it was her great friend Lady Russell's doing that she did not. They think Charles might not be learned and bookish enough to please Lady Russell, and that therefore she persuaded Anne to refuse him. The sounds were retreating, and Anne distinguished no more. Her own emotions still kept her fixed. She had much to recover from before she could move. The listener's proverbial fate was not absolutely hers. She had heard no evil of herself, but she had heard a great deal of very painful import. She saw how her own character was considered by Captain Wentworth, And there had been just that degree of feeling and curiosity about her in his manner which must give her extreme agitation. As soon as she could, she went after Mary and having found and walked back with her to their former station by the style, felt some comfort in their whole party being immediately afterwards collected and once more in motion together. Her spirits wanted the solitude and silence which only numbers could give. Charles and Henrietta returned, bringing, as may be conjectured, Charles hated with them. The minutiae of the business and could not attempt to understand. Even Captain Wentworth did not seem admitted

to perfect confidence here,

but there had been a withdrawing on the gentleman's side

and a relenting on the ladies

and that they were now very glad to be together again,

did not admit a doubt.

Henrietta looked a little ashamed, but very well pleased. Charles hate her, exceedingly happy. And they were devoted to each other almost from the first instant of their all-setting forward for uppercross. Everything now marked out Luisa for Captain Wentworth. Nothing could be planar, and where many divisions were necessary, or even where they were not, they walked side by side nearly as much as the other two. In a long strip of Meadow land, where there was ample space for all, they were thus divided, forming three distinct parties, and to that party of the three which boasted least animation and least complacence, and necessarily belonged. She joined Charles and Mary, and was tired enough to be very glad of Charles's other arm. But Charles, though in very good humor with her, was out of temper with his wife. Mary had shown herself disobleyging to him and was now to reap the consequence, which consequence was his dropping her arm almost every moment to cut off the heads of some nettles in the hedge with his switch. And when Mary began to complain of it and lament her being ill-used according to custom in being on the hedge-side. While Anne was never in commoted on the other, he dropped the arms of both to hunt after a weasel, which he had a momentary glance of, and they could hardly get him along at all. This long meadow bordered a lane, which their footpath at the end of it was across. And when the party had all reached the gate of exit, the carriage advancing in the same direction, which had been some time heard, was just coming up and proved to be Admiral Croft's gig. He and his wife had taken their intended drive, and were returning home. Upon hearing how long a walk the young people had engaged in, they kindly offered a seat to any lady who might be particularly tired. It would save her a full mile, and they were going through uppercross. The invitation was general, and generally declined. The mismus grows were not at all tired, and Mary was either offended by not being asked before any of the others, or what Luisa called the Elliot Pride could not endure to make a third in a one-horse chase. The walking party had crossed the lane, and were surmounting an opposite style, and the

admiral was putting his horse in motion again, when Captain Wentworth cleared the hedge in a moment to say something to his sister. The something might be guessed by its effects. Miss Elliott, I'm sure you are tired.

Cryed Mrs. Croft?

Do let us have the pleasure of taking you home. Here is excellent room for three. I assure you. If we were all like you, I believe we might sit for. You must indeed. You must. Anne was still in the lane, and though instinctively beginning to decline, she was not allowed to proceed. The admiral's kind urgency came in support of his wife's. They would not be refused. They compressed themselves into the smallest possible space to leave her a corner, and Captain Wentworth, without saying a word, turned to her, and quietly obliged her to be assisted into the carriage. Yes, he had done it. She was in the carriage, and felt that he had placed her there, that his will and his hands had done it. She was in the carriage and felt that he had placed her there, that his will, and his hands had done it, that she owed it to his perception of her fatigue and his resolution to give her rest. She was very much affected by the view of his disposition towards her, which all these things made apparent.

This little circumstance seemed the completion of all that had gone before. She understood him. He could not forgive her, but he could not be unfeeling, though condemning her for the past and considering it with high and unjust resentment, though perfectly careless of her and becoming attached to another, still he could not see her suffer without the desire of giving her relief. It was a remainder of former sentiment. It was an impulse of pure, though unacknowledged friendship. It was a proof of his own warm and amiable heart, which she could not contemplate, without emotion so compounded of pleasure and pain, that she knew not which prevailed. Her answers to the kindness and the remarks of her companions were at first unconsciously given. They had traveled half their way along the rough lane, before she was quite to what they said. She then found them talking of Frederick. He certainly means to have one or other of those two girls, Sophie, said the admiral, but there is no saying which. He has been running after them too long enough one would think to make up his mind. Eh, this comes of the peace. If it were war now, he would have settled it long ago. We sailors, Miss Elliott, cannot afford to make long courtships in time of war. How many days was it, my dear, between the first time of my seeing you and you're sitting down together with me in our lodgings at North Yarmouth? We had better not talk about it, my dear," replied Mrs. Croft, pleasantly. For if Miss Elliot were to hear how soon we came to an understanding, she would never be persuaded that we could be happy together. I had known you by character however long before. Well, and I had heard of you as a very pretty girl, and what were we to wait for besides? I do not like having such things so long in hand. I wish Frederick would spread a little more canvas and bring us home one of these young ladies to kill each. Then there would always be company for them, and very nice young ladies they both are. I hardly know one from the other. Very good humored, unaffected girls indeed," said Mrs. Croft, in a tone of calmer praise, such as made and suspect that her keener powers might not consider either of them as quite worthy of her brother, and a very respectable family. We could not be connected with better people. My dear Admiral, that post, we shall certainly take that post. But by cooling giving the reins a better direction herself, they happily pass the danger. And by once afterwards judiciously putting out her hand they neither fell into a rut nor ran foul of a dung cart and Anne with some amusement at their style of driving which she imagines no bad representation of the general guidance

of their affairs, found herself safely deposited by them at the cottage. Chapter 11.

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