Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
your ailing mothers and feeble old men, of all that population which you and your husband have brought into the rocky gorge of San Tome". Are you not re- isible to your conscience for all these people? Is it not worth while to make another effort, which is not at all so desperate as it looks, rather than—"
Decoud finished his thought with an upward toss of the arm, suggesting annihilation; and Mrs. Gould turned away her head with a look of horror.
"Why don't you say all this to my husband?" she asked, without looking at Decoud, who stood watch- ing the effect of his words.
"Ah! But Don Carlos is so English," he began. Mrs. Gould interrupted—
"Leave that alone, Don Martin. He's as much a Costaguanero No! He's more of a Costaguanero than yourself."
"Sentimentalist, sentimentalist," Decoud almost cooed, in a tone of gentle and soothing deference. "Sentimentalist, after the amazing manner of your people. I have been watching El Rey de Sulaco since I came here on a fool's errand, and perhaps impelled by some treason of fate lurking behind the unaccountable turns of a man's life. But I don't matter; I am not a sentimentalist, I cannot endow my personal desires with a shining robe of silk and jewels. Life is not for me a moral romance derived from the tradition of a pretty fairy-tale. No, Mrs. Gould; I am practical. I am not afraid of my motives. But. pardon me, I have been rather carried away. What I wish to say is that I have been observing. I won't say what I have discovered—"
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