Anne Elliot is the second of three daughters of vain, snobbish Sir Walter, a spendthrift baronet obliged to let his country house and move to Bath to pay his debts. Eight years before the story begins, Anne was briefly engaged to a naval officer, Frederick Wentworth, but was persuaded to break off the engagement by her godmother, Lady Russell, on grounds of prudence, a decision Anne has regretted ever since. At twenty-seven, she is now faded and thin, and life seems to have passed her by; nobody now seems to expect her to marry.<br> The new tenants of Kellynch are Admiral Croft and his wife, Wentworth's sister, which brings Anne's bittersweet memories to the fore again. Before joining her father and elder sister in Bath, she spends a few months with her younger, married sister Mary Musgrove in the country, and here she encounters Captain Wentworth again and gradually gets used to being in company with him. He treats her with cold formality, still being angry at her decision, but she is confirmed in her feeling that she will never love another man. He tries to attach himself to Henrietta or Louisa Musgrove, sisters-in-law of Mary, and both seem to hero-worship him, though Henrietta eventually re-establishes an understanding with her cousin, a young clergyman. The small but telling events of these autumnal months in the country bring Anne an exquisite mixture of pleasure and pain.