She reproached herself with this fickleness; she wondered
if she would have felt thus if they had completed their voyage to San
Francisco together; and she recalled, with a sad smile, the enthusiastic
plans they had formed during the passage to perpetuate their fellowship
by anniversaries and festivals. But she, at last, succumbed, and finally
accepted their open alienation as preferable to the growing awkwardness
of their chance encounters.
For a few weeks following the flight of Captain Bunker and her
acceptance of the hospitality and protection of the Council, she became
despondent. The courage that had sustained her, and the energy she had
shown in the first days of their abandonment, suddenly gave way, for no
apparent reason. She bitterly regretted the brother whom she scarcely
remembered; she imagined his suspense and anguish on her account, and
suffered for both; she felt the dumb pain of homesickness for a home
she had never known. Her loneliness became intolerable. Her condition
at last affected Mrs. Markham, whose own idleness had been beguiled by
writing to her husband an exhaustive account of her captivity, which had
finally swelled to a volume on Todos Santos, its resources, inhabitants,
and customs.
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