Is Mr Elliot capable of love? could his pursuit of Anne really be explained by anything else (as it doesn't assist with his goals)?

Does she know Anne at all? Has her experience at the hands of Mr Elliot made her question whether there is any real friendship?

Anne could have been Emma Woodhouse: "...handsome, clever, and rich" (E, Ch1).

Colonel Wallis is very useful - telling the Elliot's about the first wife earlier and here ensuring Mr Elliot gets the seat by Anne, then distracting Elizabeth to keep her happy. He's been, I think, entirely removed from the adaptations. This the only time we see him in the book

He's attempting to "rescue" her again (this would make it 3 if he succeeded) how terrible for him that she is instead "rescued" but her cousin, the very man who's attention awakened him to his own feelings

Not sure if she's implying that Anne will move away when she marries or Mr Elliot will convince her to drop the friendship

Yet when it comes to Mr Elliot, who is still in mourning and was actually married, everyone is fine with him pursuing Anne

This is a great cliff hanger to end the first volume. Will Louisa live? It seems like Captain Wentworth intends to marry her but what about Anne? and what of the mysterious cousin and heir?

Re-reading the novel after viewing Persuasion (2022), I was partly focused on finding the kind of comedy that Cracknell's adaptation foregrounds, which verges on slapstick at different moments, especially when Anne is involved. Anne's humor in the novel remains in the familiar realm of the satirical. But this scene with Charles Musgrove, Mary, and Anne is one of the few moments where it's possible to see some silliness in the narrative. The image of Charles chasing after this small animal to disengage himself from Mary's complaints is charming and makes him look quite silly: he is disarmed by her tenacious complaining and rather than endure them prefers to run after a small animal. The humor is turned against the couple, not at all an exemplar of marital respect. These two spouses might be found bickering but they are also conflict-averse, unable to enter into honest dialogue. The movie is inclined to giving Mary the upper hand. In the novel, Charles' possibly threatening masculinity is suggested through his persona as an avid sportsman. Hunting for weasels was not silly in and of itself at the time. These small and slender creatures had (and still do) a reputation for being ferocious predators. Thomas Bewick, who Austen would have known, describes them as follows in his A General History of Quadrupeds (1790): "The Weasel is very common, and well known in most parts of this country; is very destructive to young birds, poultry, rabbits, &c.; and is a keen devourer of eggs, which it sucks with great avidity" (219).