VII
MRS. GOULD was too intelligently sympathetic not to share that feeling. It made life exciting, and she was too much of a woman not to like excitement. But it frightened her, too, a little; and when Don José Avellanos, rocking in the American chair, would go so far as to say, "Even, my dear Carlos, if you had failed; even if some untoward event were yet to destroy your work—which God forbid!—you would have deserved well of your country," Mrs. Gould would look up from the tea-table profoundly at her unmoved husband stirring the spoon in the cup as though he had not heard a word.
Not that Don José anticipated anything of the sort. He could not praise enough dear Carlos's tact and courage. His English, rocklike quality of character was his best safeguard, Don José affirmed; and, turning to Mrs. Gould, "As to you, Emilia, my soul"—he would address her with the familiarity of his age and old friendship—"you are as true a patriot as though you had been born in our midst."
This might have been less or more than the truth. Mrs. Gould, accompanying her husband all over the province in the search for labor, had seen the land with a deeper glance than a true-born Costaguanera could have done. In her travel-worn riding-habit. her face powdered white like a plaster-cast, with a
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