the large bed, like a white couch of state, with a
profusion of snowy linen, amongst which the Padrona sat unpropped and
bowed, her handsome, black-browed face bent over her chest. A mass of
raven hair with only a few white threads in it covered her shoulders;
one thick strand fallen forward half veiled her cheek. Perfectly
motionless in that pose, expressing physical anxiety and unrest, she
turned her eyes alone towards Nostromo.

The Capataz had a red sash wound many times round his waist, and a heavy
silver ring on the forefinger of the hand he raised to give a twist to
his moustache.

"Their revolutions, their revolutions," gasped Senora Teresa. "Look,
Gian' Battista, it has killed me at last!"

Nostromo said nothing, and the sick woman with an upward glance
insisted. "Look, this one has killed me, while you were away fighting
for what did not concern you, foolish man."

"Why talk like this?" mumbled the Capataz between his teeth. "Will you
never believe in my good sense? It concerns me to keep on being what I
am: every day alike."

"You never change, indeed," she said, bitterly. "Always thinking of
yourself and taking your pay out in fine words from those who care
nothing for you."

There was between them an intimacy of antagonism as close in its way as
the intimacy of accord and affection. He had not walked along the way
of Teresa's expectations. It was she who had encouraged him to leave his
ship, in the hope of securing a friend and defender for the girls. The
wife of old Giorgio was aware of her precarious health, and was haunted
by the fear of her aged husband's loneliness and the unprotected state
of the children. She had wanted to annex that apparently quiet and
steady young man, affectionate and pliable, an orphan from his tenderest
age, as he had told her, with no ties in Italy except an uncle, owner
and master of a felucca, from whose ill-usage he had run away before he
was fourteen. He had seemed to her courageous, a hard worker, determined
to make his way in the world. From gratitude and the ties of habit he
would become like a son to herself and Giorgio; and then, who knows,
when Linda had grown up. . . . Ten years' difference between husband and
wife was not so much. Her own great man was nearly twenty years older
than herself. Gian' Battista was an attractive young fellow, besides;
attractive to men, women, and children, just by that profound quietness
of personality which, like a serene twili