sted Charles Gould. He considered him
hopelessly infected with the madness of revolutions. That is why he
hobbled in distress in the drawing-room of the Casa Gould on that
morning, exclaiming, "Decoud, Decoud!" in a tone of mournful irritation.

Mrs. Gould, her colour heightened, and with glistening eyes, looked
straight before her at the sudden enormity of that disaster. The
finger-tips on one hand rested lightly on a low little table by her
side, and the arm trembled right up to the shoulder. The sun, which
looks late upon Sulaco, issuing in all the fulness of its power high
up on the sky from behind the dazzling snow-edge of Higuerota, had
precipitated the delicate, smooth, pearly greyness of light, in which
the town lies steeped during the early hours, into sharp-cut masses of
black shade and spaces of hot, blinding glare. Three long rectangles
of sunshine fell through the windows of the sala; while just across the
street the front of the Avellanos's house appeared very sombre in its
own shadow seen through the flood of light.

A voice said at the door, "What of Decoud?"

It was Charles Gould. They had not heard him coming along the corredor.
His glance just glided over his wife and struck full at the doctor.

"You have brought some news, doctor?"

Dr. Monygham blurted it all out at once, in the rough. For some time
after he had done, the Administrador of the San Tome mine remained
looking at him without a word. Mrs. Gould sank into a low chair with her
hands lying on her lap. A silence reigned between those three motionless
persons. Then Charles Gould spoke--

"You must want some breakfast."

He stood aside to let his wife pass first. She caught up her husband's
hand and pressed it as she went out, raising her handkerchief to her
eyes. The sight of her husband had brought Antonia's position to her
mind, and she could not contain her tears at the thought of the poor
girl. When she rejoined the two men in the diningroom after having
bathed her face, Charles Gould was saying to the doctor across the
table--

"No, there does not seem any room for doubt."

And the doctor assented.

"No, I don't see myself how we could question that wretched Hirsch's
tale. It's only too true, I fear."

She sat down desolately at the head of the table and looked from one
to the other. The two men, without absolutely turning their heads away,
tried to avoid her glance. The doctor even made a show of being hungry;
he seized hi