"All over!"
"And you don't find anything?"
"Nothin'," said Gabriel. "Nary. Thet is," he added with his usual cautious deliberation, "thet is, nothin' o' any account. The gold, ef there is any, lies lower down in the gulch, whar I used to dig. But I kept at it jest to satisfy your whim. You know, July, it was a whim of yours," he continued, with a certain gentle deprecatoriness of manner.
A terrible thought flashed suddenly upon Mrs. Conroy. Could Dr. Devarges have made a mistake? Might he not have been delirious or insane when he wrote of the treasure? Or had the Secretary deceived her as to its location? A swift and sickening sense that all she had gained, or was to gain, from her scheme, was the man before her—and that he did not love her as other men had—asserted itself through her trembling consciousness. Mrs. Conroy had already begun to fear that she loved this husband, and it was with a new sense of yearning and dependence that she in her turn looked deprecatingly and submissively into his face and said—
"It was only a whim, dear—I dare say a foolish one. It's gone now. Don't mind it!"
"I don't," said Gabriel, simply.
Mrs. Conroy winced.
"I thought you looked disappointed," she said after a pause.
"It ain't that I was thinkin' on, July; it's Olly," said Gabriel.
There is a limit even to a frightened woman's submission.