Page 620 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

has something to say to you alone.’
‘Impossible!’ murmured Mrs. Gould.
‘He said to me, ‘Remind her that I have done something
to keep a roof over her head.’ … Mrs. Gould,’ the doctor
pursued, in the greatest excitement. ‘Do you remember the
silver? The silver in the lighter—that was lost?’
Mrs. Gould remembered. But she did not say she hated
the mere mention of that silver. Frankness personified, she
remembered with an exaggerated horror that for the first
and last time of her life she had concealed the truth from
her husband about that very silver. She had been corrupted
by her fears at that time, and she had never forgiven herself.
Moreover, that silver, which would never have come down
if her husband had been made acquainted with the news
brought by Decoud, had been in a roundabout way nearly
the cause of Dr. Monygham’s death. And these things ap-
peared to her very dreadful.
‘Was it lost, though?’ the doctor exclaimed. ‘I’ve always
felt that there was a mystery about our Nostromo ever since.
I do believe he wants now, at the point of death——‘
‘The point of death?’ repeated Mrs. Gould.
‘Yes. Yes…. He wants perhaps to tell you something con-
cerning that silver which——‘
‘Oh, no! No!’ exclaimed Mrs. Gould, in a low voice. ‘Isn’t
it lost and done with? Isn’t there enough treasure without it
to make everybody in the world miserable?’
The doctor remained still, in a submissive, disappointed
silence. At last he ventured, very low—
‘And there is that Viola girl, Giselle. What are we to do? It

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