Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
on the balcony at five o'clock to see you pass. Till
then, good-bye."
Charles Gould walked rapidly round the table, and, seizing her hands, bent down, pressing them both to his lips. Before he straightened himself up again to his full height she had disengaged one to smooth his cheek with a light touch, as if he were a little boy.
"Try to get some rest for a couple of hours," she murmured, with a glance at a hammock stretched in a distant part of the room. Her long train swished softly after her on the red tiles. At the door she looked back.
Two big lamps with unpolished glass globes bathed in a soft and abundant light the four white walls of the room, with a glass case of arms, the brass hilt of Henry Gould's cavalry sabre on its square of velvet, and the water-color sketch of the San Tomé gorge. And Mrs. Gould, gazing at the last in its black wooden frame, sighed out:
"Ah, if we had left it alone, Charles!"
"No," Charles Gould said, moodily; "it was impossible to leave it alone."
"Perhaps it was impossible," Mrs. Gould admitted slowly. Her lips quivered a little, but she smiled with an air of dainty bravado, "We have disturbed a good many snakes in that paradise, Charley, haven't we?"
"Yes; I remember," said Charles Gould, "it was Don Pépé who called the gorge the paradise of snakes. No doubt we have disturbed a great many. But remember, my dear, that it is not now as it was when you made that sketch." He waved his hand towards
231
