Page 173 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

could have disclosed; but the Ricos, as the populace called
them, had contributed under the pressure of their Nestor’s
eloquence. Some of the more enthusiastic ladies had been
moved to bring offerings of jewels into the hands of the man
who was the life and soul of the party.
There were moments when both his life and his soul
seemed overtaxed by so many years of undiscouraged be-
lief in regeneration. He appeared almost inanimate, sitting
rigidly by the side of Mrs. Gould in the landau, with his fine,
old, clean-shaven face of a uniform tint as if modelled in
yellow wax, shaded by a soft felt hat, the dark eyes looking
out fixedly. Antonia, the beautiful Antonia, as Miss Avella-
nos was called in Sulaco, leaned back, facing them; and her
full figure, the grave oval of her face with full red lips, made
her look more mature than Mrs. Gould, with her mobile
expression and small, erect person under a slightly sway-
ing sunshade.
Whenever possible Antonia attended her father; her rec-
ognized devotion weakened the shocking effect of her scorn
for the rigid conventions regulating the life of Spanish-
American girlhood. And, in truth, she was no longer girlish.
It was said that she often wrote State papers from her fa-
ther’s dictation, and was allowed to read all the books in his
library. At the receptions— where the situation was saved
by the presence of a very decrepit old lady (a relation of the
Corbelans), quite deaf and motionless in an armchair—An-
tonia could hold her own in a discussion with two or three
men at a time. Obviously she was not the girl to be content
with peeping through a barred window at a cloaked figure

1 Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard