Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
reigned between those three motionless persons. Then Charles Gould spoke:
"You must want some breakfast."
He stood aside to let his wife pass first. She caught up her husband's hand and pressed it as she went out, raising the handkerchief to her eyes. The sight of her husband had brought Antonia's position to her mind, and she could not contain her tears at the thought of the poor girl. When she rejoined the two men in the dining-room after having bathed her face, Charles Gould was saying to the doctor across the table:
"No; there does not seem any room for doubt."
And the doctor assented:
"No, I don't see myself how we could question that wretched Hirsch's tale. It's only too true, I fear."
She sat down desolately at the head of the table and looked from one to the other. The two men, without absolutely turning their heads away, tried to avoid her glance. The doctor even made a show of being hungry. He seized his knife and fork and began to eat with emphasis, as if on the stage. Charles Gould made no pretence of the sort; with his elbows raised squarely he twisted both ends of his flaming mustaches—they were so long that his hands were quite away from his face.
"I am not surprised," he muttered, abandoning his mustaches and throwing one arm over the back of his chair. His face was calm with that immobility of expression which betrays the intensity of a mental struggle. He felt that this accident had brought to a point all the consequences involved in his line of
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