Cirrus@Austlit

Epigraph: He [Captain Frederick Wentworth] was, at that time, a remarkably fine young man, with a great deal of intelligence, spirit and brilliancy; and Anne an extremely pretty girl, with gentleness, modesty, taste, and feeling.... They were gradually acquainted, and when acquainted, rapidly and deeply in love.... A short period of exquisite felicity followed, and but a short one. - Trouble soon arose. Sir Walter ... thought it a very degrading alliance; and Lady Russell ... received it as a most unfortunate one.
Anne Elliot, with all her claims of birth, beauty, and mind, to throw herself away at nineteen; involve herself at nineteen in an engagement with a young man, who had nothing but himself to recommend him, and no hopes of attaining influence, but in the chances of a most uncertain profession, and no connexions to secure even his farther rise in that profession.... Such opposition as these feelings produced, was more than Anne could combat.... Lady Russell, whom she had always loved and relied on, could not, with such steadiness of opinion, and such tenderness of manner, be continually advising her in vain. She was persuaded to believe the engagement a wrong thing - indiscreet, improper, hardly capable of success, and not deserving it.... she had to encounter all the additional pain of opinions, on his side, totally unconvinced and unbending, and of his feeling himself ill-used by so forced a relinquishment. - He had left the country in consequence.
... Anne, as she sat near the window, descried, most decidedly and distinctly, Captain Wentworth walking down the street ... For a few minutes she saw nothing before her. It was all confusion. She was lost ... she had scolded back her senses.... He was more obviously struck and confused by the sight of her. ... he looked quite red. For the first time, since their renewed acquaintance, she felt that she was betraying the least sensibility of the two. She had the advantage of him, in the preparation of the last few moments. All the overpowering, blinding, bewildering, first effects of strong surprise were over with her. Still, however, she had enough to feel! It was agitation, pain, pleasure, a something between delight and misery.
(Jane Austen, Persuasion, 1818)

Epigraph: Drew had fallen in love with her and, a few days before he was due to fly back to Sydney, asked her to marry him. Jenna said yes, and then they made the mistake of approaching her grandmother for consent, since Jenna wasn't of age.
"A grocer's son marry my granddaughter? Over my dead body!" the old lady had hissed at Drew, the fact that Drew had already made his mark as a successful businessman not rating a bean in her grandmother's book.
"Don't tempt me," had been Drew's sarcastic rejoinder.
Her grandmother had a lot to answer for ... She had prevented Jenna marrying Drew and, in her heart, Jenna could not forgive her for that - nor herself for not standing up to her. Nor Drew, for not forcing her to marry him.... Drew should have known better, should have known she was young and gullible and had been taken in by old Sarah Anderson.
(Edwina Shore, Storm Clouds Gathering, 1988)