He sat down with them, and improved their conversation very much.
There could be no doubt of his being a sensible man. Ten minutes were
enough to certify that. His tone, his expressions, his choice of
subject, his knowing where to stop; it was all the operation of a
sensible, discerning mind. As soon as he could, he began to talk to
her of Lyme, wanting to compare opinions respecting the place, but
especially wanting to speak of the circumstance of their happening to
be guests in the same inn at the same time; to give his own route,
understand something of hers, and regret that he should have lost such
an opportunity of paying his respects to her. She gave him a short
account of her party and business at Lyme. His regret increased as he
listened. He had spent his whole solitary evening in the room
adjoining theirs; had heard voices, mirth continually; thought they
must be a most delightful set of people, longed to be with them, but
certainly without the smallest suspicion of his possessing the shadow
of a right to introduce himself. If he had but asked who the party
were! The name of Musgrove would have told him enough. "Well, it
would serve to cure him of an absurd practice of never asking a
question at an inn, which he had adopted, when quite a young man, on
the principal of its being very ungenteel to be curious.
"The notions of a young man of one or two and twenty," said he, "as to
what is necessary in manners to make him quite the thing, are more
absurd, I believe, than those of any other set of beings in the world.
The folly of the means they often employ is only to be equalled by the
folly of what they have in view."
But he must not be addressing his reflections to Anne alone: he knew
it; he was soon diffused again among the others, and it was only at
intervals that he could return to Lyme.
His enquiries, however, produced at length an account of the scene she
had been engaged in there, soon after his leaving the place. Having
alluded to "an accident," he must hear the whole. When he questioned,
Sir Walter and Elizabeth began to question also, but the difference in
their manner of doing it could not be unfelt. She could only compare
Mr Elliot to Lady Russell, in the wish of really comprehending what had
passed, and in the degree of concern for what she must have suffered in
witnessing it.