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.
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