Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
the treasure with four ingots missing? They would have said I had purloined them. The doctor would have said that. Alas! it holds me yet!"
Mrs. Gould bent low, fascinated — cold with apprehension.
"What became of Don Martin on that night, Nostromo?"
"Who knows? I wondered what would become of me. Now I know. Death was to come upon me unawares. He went away! He betrayed me. And you think I have killed him! You are all alike, you fine people. The silver has killed me. It has held me. It holds me yet. Nobody knows where it is. But you are the wife of Don Carlos, who put it into my hands and said, 'Save it on your life.' And when I returned, and you all thought it was lost, what do I hear? It was nothing of importance. Let it go. Up, Nostromo, the faithful, and ride away to save us, for dear life!"
"Nostromo," Mrs. Gould whispered, bending very low, "I, too, have hated the idea of that silver from the bottom of my heart."
"Marvellous! — that one of you should hate the wealth that you know so well how to take from the hands of the poor. The world rests upon the poor, as old Giorgio says. You have been always good to the poor. But there is something accursed in wealth. Señorara, shall I tell you where the treasure is? To you alone. . . . Shining! Incorruptible!"
A pained, involuntary reluctance lingered in his tone, in his eyes, plain to the woman with the genius of sympathetic intuition. She averted her glance from
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