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mine by the hour with her husband with unwearied inter-
est and satisfaction. And dropping her eyelids expressively,
she added—
‘What do you feel about it, Charley?’
Then, surprised at her husband’s silence, she raised her
eyes, opened wide, as pretty as pale flowers. He had done
with the spurs, and, twisting his moustache with both
hands, horizontally, he contemplated her from the height of
his long legs with a visible appreciation of her appearance.
The consciousness of being thus contemplated pleased Mrs.
Gould.
‘They are considerable men,’ he said.
‘I know. But have you listened to their conversation? They
don’t seem to have understood anything they have seen
here.’
‘They have seen the mine. They have understood that to
some purpose,’ Charles Gould interjected, in defence of the
visitors; and then his wife mentioned the name of the most
considerable of the three. He was considerable in finance
and in industry. His name was familiar to many millions
of people. He was so considerable that he would never have
travelled so far away from the centre of his activity if the
doctors had not insisted, with veiled menaces, on his tak-
ing a long holiday.
‘Mr. Holroyd’s sense of religion,’ Mrs. Gould pursued,
‘was shocked and disgusted at the tawdriness of the dressed-
up saints in the cathedral—the worship, he called it, of wood
and tinsel. But it seemed to me that he looked upon his own
God as a sort of influential partner, who gets his share of