Anne Elliot shares with her cousin her frustration at being asked to spend time with a rather empty-headed relation, Lady Dalrymple, simply because she and her daughter Miss Carteret are aristocrats. Anne’s cousin tries to reconcile her to it, by suggesting that Anne’s expectations of ‘good company’ are too exacting.

Mr Elliot enlarges on his opinion that ‘good company’ requires little more than social status and civilised behaviour. He urges Anne not to shun her father’s colourless aristocratic relations, as their patronage will be noticed favourably in Bath. Anne, however, does not wish to be known as one of the Dalrymples’ hangers-on.

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