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hills, for which we are starving our love.’
She ceased, seeing Linda standing silent at the corner of
the house.
Nostromo turned to his affianced wife with a greeting,
and was amazed at her sunken eyes, at her hollow cheeks, at
the air of illness and anguish in her face.
‘Have you been ill?’ he asked, trying to put some concern
into this question.
Her black eyes blazed at him. ‘Am I thinner?’ she asked.
‘Yes—perhaps—a little.’
‘And older?’
‘Every day counts—for all of us.’
‘I shall go grey, I fear, before the ring is on my finger,’ she
said, slowly, keeping her gaze fastened upon him.
She waited for what he would say, rolling down her
turned-up sleeves.
‘No fear of that,’ he said, absently.
She turned away as if it had been something final, and
busied herself with household cares while Nostromo talked
with her father. Conversation with the old Garibaldino was
not easy. Age had left his faculties unimpaired, only they
seemed to have withdrawn somewhere deep within him.
His answers were slow in coming, with an effect of august
gravity. But that day he was more animated, quicker; there
seemed to be more life in the old lion. He was uneasy for the
integrity of his honour. He believed Sidoni’s warning as to
Ramirez’s designs upon his younger daughter. And he did
not trust her. She was flighty. He said nothing of his cares
to ‘Son Gian’ Battista.’ It was a touch of senile vanity. He

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