"And how long is this close immurement to continue?" I asked again, after another dreary pause. "Am I not permitted to breathe the external air—to exercise? Is my health to be unconsidered?"
"I know nothing more than I have told you," she replied. "I am directed to furnish you with every means of comfort—with books, flowers, clothing, musical instrument, even, if you desire it; but, for the present, you will not leave these walls, and you will see no society. The doctor has decided that this is best."
"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.