"I am half agony, half hope." Anne Elliot lost the love of her life eight years earlier and the sorrow lingers on. Yet the dashing Captain Wentworth did not desert her; it was Anne who rejected him because she was persuaded that she could make a better match. She never did. Suddenly, life deals them a second chance. Anne and Wentworth meet again on the social circuit. He acts coolly and even openly courts a younger woman, yet Anne remains painfully alert for the slightest hint that their love might be rekindled. Persuasion was Austen's last novel, published posthumously in 1818