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

ably, they thought; and Charles Gould, besides knowingthoroughly what he was about, had shown himself a realhustler. These facts caused them to be well disposed towardshis wife. An unmistakable enthusiasm, pointed by aslight flavour of irony, made her talk of the mine absolutelyfascinating to her visitors, and provoked them to grave andindulgent smiles in which there was a good deal of deference.Perhaps had they known how much she was inspired by anidealistic view of success they would have been amazed atthe state of her mind as the Spanish-American ladies hadbeen amazed at the tireless activity of her body. She would—in her own words—have been for them ‘something of amonster.’ However, the Goulds were in essentials a reticentcouple, and their guests departed without the suspicion ofany other purpose but simple profit in the working of a silvermine. Mrs. Gould had out her own carriage, with twowhite mules, to drive them down to the harbour, whencethe Ceres was to carry them off into the Olympus of plutocrats.Captain Mitchell had snatched at the occasion ofleave-taking to remark to Mrs. Gould, in a low, confidentialmutter, ‘This marks an epoch.’Mrs. Gould loved the patio of her Spanish house. A broadflight of stone steps was overlooked silently from a niche inthe wall by a Madonna in blue robes with the crowned childsitting on her arm. Subdued voices ascended in the earlymornings from the paved well of the quadrangle, with thestamping of horses and mules led out in pairs to drink at thecistern. A tangle of slender bamboo stems drooped its narrow,blade-like leaves over the square pool of water, and the