nd they
discussed that opinion long and earnestly, as if they could influence a
mind across half the globe; but in reality they discussed it because the
sentiment of love can enter into any subject and live ardently in remote
phrases. For this natural reason these discussions were precious to Mrs.
Gould in her engaged state. Charles feared that Mr. Gould, senior, was
wasting his strength and making himself ill by his efforts to get rid
of the Concession. "I fancy that this is not the kind of handling it
requires," he mused aloud, as if to himself. And when she wondered
frankly that a man of character should devote his energies to plotting
and intrigues, Charles would remark, with a gentle concern that
understood her wonder, "You must not forget that he was born there."

She would set her quick mind to work upon that, and then make the
inconsequent retort, which he accepted as perfectly sagacious, because,
in fact, it was so--

"Well, and you? You were born there, too."

He knew his answer.

"That's different. I've been away ten years. Dad never had such a long
spell; and it was more than thirty years ago."

She was the first person to whom he opened his lips after receiving the
news of his father's death.

"It has killed him!" he said.

He had walked straight out of town with the news, straight out before
him in the noonday sun on the white road, and his feet had brought
him face to face with her in the hall of the ruined palazzo, a room
magnificent and naked, with here and there a long strip of damask, black
with damp and age, hanging down on a bare panel of the wall. It was
furnished with exactly one gilt armchair, with a broken back, and an
octagon columnar stand bearing a heavy marble vase ornamented with
sculptured masks and garlands of flowers, and cracked from top to
bottom. Charles Gould was dusty with the white dust of the road lying
on his boots, on his shoulders, on his cap with two peaks. Water dripped
from under it all over his face, and he grasped a thick oaken cudgel in
his bare right hand.

She went very pale under the roses of her big straw hat, gloved,
swinging a clear sunshade, caught just as she was going out to meet him
at the bottom of the hill, where three poplars stand near the wall of a
vineyard.

"It has killed him!" he repeated. "He ought to have had many years yet.
We are a long-lived family."

She was too startled to say anything; he was contemplating with a
penetrating and mot