Page 423 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

Mrs. Gould sank into a low chair with her hands lying on
her lap. A silence reigned between those three motionless
persons. Then Charles Gould spoke—
‘You must want some breakfast.’
He stood aside to let his wife pass first. She caught up
her husband’s hand and pressed it as she went out, rais-
ing her handkerchief to her eyes. The sight of her husband
had brought Antonia’s position to her mind, and she could
not contain her tears at the thought of the poor girl. When
she rejoined the two men in the diningroom after having
bathed her face, Charles Gould was saying to the doctor
across the table—
‘No, there does not seem any room for doubt.’
And the doctor assented.
‘No, I don’t see myself how we could question that wretch-
ed Hirsch’s tale. It’s only too true, I fear.’
She sat down desolately at the head of the table and
looked from one to the other. The two men, without abso-
lutely turning their heads away, tried to avoid her glance.
The doctor even made a show of being hungry; he seized his
knife and fork, and began to eat with emphasis, as if on the
stage. Charles Gould made no pretence of the sort; with his
elbows raised squarely, he twisted both ends of his flaming
moustaches—they were so long that his hands were quite
away from his face.
‘I am not surprised,’ he muttered, abandoning his mous-
taches and throwing one arm over the back of his chair. His
face was calm with that immobility of expression which
betrays the intensity of a mental struggle. He felt that this ac-

Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard