Page 625 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

Tome mine. And Mrs. Gould, feeling her suppressed sob-
bing, nervous and excited, had the first and only moment
of bitterness in her life. It was worthy of Dr. Monygham
himself.
‘Console yourself, child. Very soon he would have forgot-
ten you for his treasure.’
‘Senora, he loved me. He loved me,’ Giselle whispered,
despairingly. ‘He loved me as no one had ever been loved
before.’
‘I have been loved, too,’ Mrs. Gould said in a severe tone.
Giselle clung to her convulsively. ‘Oh, senora, but you
shall live adored to the end of your life,’ she sobbed out.
Mrs. Gould kept an unbroken silence till the carriage ar-
rived. She helped in the half-fainting girl. After the doctor
had shut the door of the landau, she leaned over to him.
‘You can do nothing?’ she whispered.
‘No, Mrs. Gould. Moreover, he won’t let us touch him. It
does not matter. I just had one look…. Useless.’
But he promised to see old Viola and the other girl that
very night. He could get the police-boat to take him off to
the island. He remained in the street, looking after the lan-
dau rolling away slowly behind the white mules.
The rumour of some accident—an accident to Captain
Fidanza—had been spreading along the new quays with
their rows of lamps and the dark shapes of towering cranes.
A knot of night prowlers—the poorest of the poor—hung
about the door of the first-aid hospital, whispering in the
moonlight of the empty street.
There was no one with the wounded man but the pale

Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard