Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
lican, 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 Doña Emilia, the first lady of Sulaco, the wife of the Señor Administrador of the San Tomé mine. And Mrs. Gould, feeling her suppressed sobbing, nervous and excited, had the first and only moment of cynical bitterness in her life. It was worthy of Dr. Monygham himself.
"Console yourself, child. Very soon he would have forgotten you for his treasure."
"Señora, 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, señora, 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.
"You can do nothing?" she whispered.
"No, Mrs. Gould. Moreover, he won't let us touch him. It does not matter. I just had one look. . . . Useless."
But he promised to see old Viola and the other girl that very night. He could get the police-boat to take him off to the island. He remained in the street, looking after the landau rolling away slowly behind the white mules.
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