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sceptical, bitter speech, had no other means of showing his
profound respect for the character of the woman who was
known in the country as the English Senora. He presented
this tribute very seriously indeed; it was no trifle for a man
of his habits. Mrs. Gould felt that, too, perfectly. She would
never have thought of imposing upon him this marked
show of deference.
She kept her old Spanish house (one of the finest spec-
imens in Sulaco) open for the dispensation of the small
graces of existence. She dispensed them with simplicity and
charm because she was guided by an alert perception of val-
ues. She was highly gifted in the art of human intercourse
which consists in delicate shades of self-forgetfulness and in
the suggestion of universal comprehension. Charles Gould
(the Gould family, established in Costaguana for three gen-
erations, always went to England for their education and for
their wives) imagined that he had fallen in love with a girl’s
sound common sense like any other man, but these were
not exactly the reasons why, for instance, the whole sur-
veying camp, from the youngest of the young men to their
mature chief, should have found occasion to allude to Mrs.
Gould’s house so frequently amongst the high peaks of the
Sierra. She would have protested that she had done nothing
for them, with a low laugh and a surprised widening of her
grey eyes, had anybody told her how convincingly she was
remembered on the edge of the snow-line above Sulaco. But
directly, with a little capable air of setting her wits to work,
she would have found an explanation. ‘Of course, it was
such a surprise for these boys to find any sort of welcome

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