“Now, Mrs. Gould,” he said, almost brutally in his impatience, “tell me, was I right? There is a mystery. You have got the word of it, have you not? He told you——”
“He told me nothing,” said Mrs. Gould, steadily.
The light of his temperamental enmity to Nostromo went out of Dr. Monygham's eyes. He stepped back submissively. He did not believe Mrs. Gould. But her word was law. He accepted her denial like an inexplicable fatality affirming the victory of Nostromo's genius over his own. Even before that woman, whom he loved with secret devotion, he had been defeated by the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores, the man who had lived his own life on the assumption of unbroken fidelity, rectitude, and courage!
“Pray send at once somebody for my carriage,” spoke Mrs. Gould from within her hood. Then, turning to Giselle Viola, “Come nearer me, child; come closer. We will wait here.”
Giselle Viola, heartbroken and childlike, her face veiled in her falling hair, crept up to her side. Mrs. Gould slipped her hand through the arm of the unworthy daughter of old Viola, the immaculate republican, the hero without a stain. Slowly, gradually, as a withered flower droops, the head of the girl, who would have followed a thief to the end of the world, rested on the shoulder of Dona Emilia, the first lady of Sulaco, the wife of the Senor Administrador of the San Tome mine. And Mrs. Gould, feeling her suppressed sobbing, nervous and excited, had the first and only moment of bitterness in her life. It was worthy of Dr. Monygham himself.
“Console yourself, child. Very soon he would have forgotten you for his treasure.”
“Senora, he loved me. He loved me,” Giselle whispered, despairingly. “He loved me as no one had ever been loved before.”
“I have been loved, too,” Mrs. Gould said in a severe tone.
Giselle clung to her convulsively. “Oh, senora, but you shall live adored to the end of your life,” she sobbed out.
Mrs. Gould kept an unbroken silence till the carriage arrived. She helped in the half-fainting girl. After the doctor had shut the door of the landau, she leaned over to him.