“And whence did he derive his authority?”

“Oh, it was all arranged between him and Mr. Bainrothe, your guardeen” (for thus she pronounced this word, ever hateful to me), “long ago; before he went to France, I suppose.  Captain Van Dorne had nothing to do but hand you over.”

“Captain Van Dorne!  To think those honest eyes could so deceive me!” and I shook my head wofully.

When I looked up again from reverie, Mrs. Clayton had settled herself to work with a basket of stockings on her knees, which she appeared to be assorting assiduously.

There she sat, spectacles on nose, thimble on twisted finger, ivory-egg in hand, in active preparation for that work, woman’s par excellence, that alone rivals Penelope’s.  Surely that assortment of yellow, ill-mated, half-worn, and holey hose, was a treasure to her, that no gold could have replaced, in our dreary solitude (none the less dreary for being so luxurious).  I envied her almost the power she seemed to have to merge her mind in things like these; and saw, for the first time in my life, what advantages might lie in being commonplace.

It was now nearly the end of July.  My birthday occurred in the middle of September.  I thought I knew that, as soon as possible after my majority, Mr. Bainrothe’s conditions would be laid before me.

I could not, dared not, believe that my captivity would be lengthened beyond that time.  I resolved that I would condone the past, and go forth penniless, if this were exacted in exchange for liberty at the end of a month and a half from this time.

Six weeks to wait!  Were they not, in the fullness of their power, to crush and baffle me?  Six weary years!  For, during all this time, I felt that the unexplained mystery that weighed upon my life would gather in force and inflexibility.  Death would have seemed to have set its seal upon it, in the estimation of Captain Wentworth, as of all others.  He would never know that the sea, which swallowed up the Kosciusko, had spared the woman he loved, nor receive the explanation that she alone could give him, of the mystery he deplored.

Before I emerged from my prison, he might be gone to the antipodes, for aught I knew, and a barrier of eternal silence and absence be interposed between us.  So worked my fate!  These reflections continued to haunt and oppress me, by night and day, and life itself seemed a bitter burden in that interval of rebellious agony, and in that terrible seclusion, where luxury itself became an additional engine of torture.

Days passed, alternately of leaden apathy and bitter gloom, varied by irrepressible paroxysms of despair.  Whenever I found myself alone, even for a few moments, I paced my room and wept aloud, or prayed passionately.  There were times when I felt that my Creator heard and pitied me; others when I persuaded myself his ear was closed inexorably against me.

I suffered fearfully—­this could not last.  The accusation brought against me by my enemies seemed almost ready to be realized, when my body magnanimously assumed the penalty the soul was perhaps about to pay, and drifted off to fever.