Page 237 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

CHAPTER SIX

PROFOUND stillness reigned in the Casa Gould.
A The master of the house, walking along the corredor,
opened the door of his room, and saw his wife sitting in
a big armchair—his own smoking armchair—thoughtful,
contemplating her little shoes. And she did not raise her
eyes when he walked in.
‘Tired?’ asked Charles Gould.
‘A little,’ said Mrs. Gould. Still without looking up, she
added with feeling, ‘There is an awful sense of unreality
about all this.’
Charles Gould, before the long table strewn with papers,
on which lay a hunting crop and a pair of spurs, stood look-
ing at his wife: ‘The heat and dust must have been awful this
afternoon by the waterside,’ he murmured, sympathetically.
‘The glare on the water must have been simply terrible.’
‘One could close one’s eyes to the glare,’ said Mrs. Gould.
‘But, my dear Charley, it is impossible for me to close my
eyes to our position; to this awful …’
She raised her eyes and looked at her husband’s face,
from which all sign of sympathy or any other feeling had
disappeared. ‘Why don’t you tell me something?’ she al-
most wailed.
‘I thought you had understood me perfectly from the
first,’ Charles Gould said, slowly. ‘I thought we had said all

Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard