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

looks as though father and sister had——‘Mrs. Gould admitted that she felt in duty bound to doher best for these girls.‘I have a volante here,’ the doctor said. ‘If you don’t mindgetting into that——‘He waited, all impatience, till Mrs. Gould reappeared,having thrown over her dress a grey cloak with a deephood.It was thus that, cloaked and monastically hooded overher evening costume, this woman, full of endurance andcompassion, stood by the side of the bed on which thesplendid Capataz de Cargadores lay stretched out motionlesson his back. The whiteness of sheets and pillows gave asombre and energetic relief to his bronzed. face, to the dark,nervous hands, so good on a tiller, upon a bridle and on atrigger, lying open and idle upon a white coverlet.‘She is innocent,’ the Capataz was saying in a deep andlevel voice, as though afraid that a louder word would breakthe slender hold his spirit still kept upon his body. ‘She is innocent.It is I alone. But no matter. For these things I wouldanswer to no man or woman alive.’He paused. Mrs. Gould’s face, very white within theshadow of the hood, bent over him with an invincible anddreary sadness. And the low sobs of Giselle Viola, kneelingat the end of the bed, her gold hair with coppery gleamsloose and scattered over the Capataz’s feet, hardly troubledthe silence of the room.‘Ha! Old Giorgio—the guardian of thine honour! Fancythe Vecchio coming upon me so light of foot, so steady of