27-year-old Anne Elliot is the second daughter of the widowed baronet Sir Walter Elliot, who unlike her vain father and sisters, is humble, sensible and modest. The Elliot family has to move house to lower their expenses and get out of debt. They rent their former home to an Admiral and his wife. The wife's brother, Navy Captain Frederick Wentworth, had been engaged to Anne in 1806, and now they meet again, both single and unattached, after no contact in more than seven years.