Page 624 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

lost for ever.’
After hearing these words, Nostromo closed his eyes, ut-
tered no word, made no movement. Outside the door of the
sick-room Dr. Monygham, excited to the highest pitch, his
eyes shining with eagerness, came up to the two women.
‘Now, Mrs. Gould,’ he said, almost brutally in his impa-
tience, ‘tell me, was I right? There is a mystery. You have got
the word of it, have you not? He told you——‘
‘He told me nothing,’ said Mrs. Gould, steadily.
The light of his temperamental enmity to Nostromo went
out of Dr. Monygham’s eyes. He stepped back submissively.
He did not believe Mrs. Gould. But her word was law. He
accepted her denial like an inexplicable fatality affirming
the victory of Nostromo’s genius over his own. Even before
that woman, whom he loved with secret devotion, he had
been defeated by the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores,
the man who had lived his own life on the assumption of
unbroken fidelity, rectitude, and courage!
‘Pray send at once somebody for my carriage,’ spoke Mrs.
Gould from within her hood. Then, turning to Giselle Viola,
‘Come nearer me, child; come closer. We will wait here.’
Giselle Viola, heartbroken and childlike, her face veiled
in her falling hair, crept up to her side. Mrs. Gould slipped
her hand through the arm of the unworthy daughter of old
Viola, the immaculate republican, the hero without a stain.
Slowly, gradually, as a withered flower droops, the head of
the girl, who would have followed a thief to the end of the
world, rested on the shoulder of Dona Emilia, the first lady
of Sulaco, the wife of the Senor Administrador of the San