Page 201 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

jected, ‘Don’t answer him, Emilia. He is attacking me.’
‘You surely do not think I was attacking Don Carlos!’ De-
coud answered.
And then the carriage stopped before the door of the
Casa Gould. The young man offered his hand to the ladies.
They went in first together; Don Jose walked by the side of
Decoud, and the gouty old porter tottered after them with
some light wraps on his arm.
Don Jose slipped his hand under the arm of the journal-
ist of Sulaco.
‘The Porvenir must have a long and confident article
upon Barrios and the irresistibleness of his army of Cayta!
The moral effect should be kept up in the country. We must
cable encouraging extracts to Europe and the United States
to maintain a favourable impression abroad.’
Decoud muttered, ‘Oh, yes, we must comfort our friends,
the speculators.’
The long open gallery was in shadow, with its screen of
plants in vases along the balustrade, holding out motionless
blossoms, and all the glass doors of the reception-rooms
thrown open. A jingle of spurs died out at the further end.
Basilio, standing aside against the wall, said in a soft
tone to the passing ladies, ‘The Senor Administrador is just
back from the mountain.’
In the great sala, with its groups of ancient Spanish and
modern European furniture making as if different centres
under the high white spread of the ceiling, the silver and
porcelain of the tea-service gleamed among a cluster of
dwarf chairs, like a bit of a lady’s boudoir, putting in a note

00 Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard