Page 608 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

N THE day Mrs. Gould was going, in Dr. Monygham’s
Owords, to ‘give a tertulia,’ Captain Fidanza went down
the side of his schooner lying in Sulaco harbour, calm, un-
bending, deliberate in the way he sat down in his dinghy
and took up his sculls. He was later than usual. The after-
noon was well advanced before he landed on the beach of
the Great Isabel, and with a steady pace climbed the slope
of the island.
From a distance he made out Giselle sitting in a chair
tilted back against the end of the house, under the window
of the girl’s room. She had her embroidery in her hands, and
held it well up to her eyes. The tranquillity of that girlish fig-
ure exasperated the feeling of perpetual struggle and strife
he carried in his breast. He became angry. It seemed to him
that she ought to hear the clanking of his fetters—his silver
fetters, from afar. And while ashore that day, he had met the
doctor with the evil eye, who had looked at him very hard.
The raising of her eyes mollified him. They smiled in
their flower-like freshness straight upon his heart. Then she
frowned. It was a warning to be cautious. He stopped some
distance away, and in a loud, indifferent tone, said—
‘Good day, Giselle. Is Linda up yet?’
‘Yes. She is in the big room with father.’
He approached then, and, looking through the window

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