Nostromo - A Tale of the Seaboard.pdf - Planet eBook

CHAPTER SEVEN‘MRS. GOULD was too intelligently sympathetic not toshare that feeling. It made life exciting, and she wastoo much of a woman not to like excitement. But it frightenedher, too, a little; and when Don Jose Avellanos, rockingin the American chair, would go so far as to say, ‘Even, mydear Carlos, if you had failed; even if some untoward eventwere yet to destroy your work—which God forbid!—youwould have deserved well of your country,’ Mrs. Gouldwould look up from the tea-table profoundly at her unmovedhusband stirring the spoon in the cup as though hehad not heard a word.Not that Don Jose anticipated anything of the sort. Hecould not praise enough dear Carlos’s tact and courage. HisEnglish, rock-like quality of character was his best safeguard,Don Jose affirmed; and, turning to Mrs. Gould, ‘Asto you, Emilia, my soul’—he would address her with thefamiliarity of his age and old friendship—‘you are as true apatriot as though you had been born in our midst.’This might have been less or more than the truth. Mrs.Gould, accompanying her husband all over the province inthe search for labour, had seen the land with a deeper glancethan a trueborn Costaguanera could have done. In her travel-wornriding habit, her face powdered white like a plastercast, with a further protection of a small silk mask during