Blanco party in Sulaco has collapsed inexcusably, but in the
characteristic manner of this country. But Barrios, untouched in Cayta,
remains still available. I am forced to take up openly the plan of a
provincial revolution as the only way of placing the enormous material
interests involved in the prosperity and peace of Sulaco in a position
of permanent safety. . . ." That was clear. He saw these words as
if written in letters of fire upon the wall at which he was gazing
abstractedly.

Mrs Gould watched his abstraction with dread. It was a domestic and
frightful phenomenon that darkened and chilled the house for her like a
thundercloud passing over the sun. Charles Gould's fits of abstraction
depicted the energetic concentration of a will haunted by a fixed idea.
A man haunted by a fixed idea is insane. He is dangerous even if
that idea is an idea of justice; for may he not bring the heaven down
pitilessly upon a loved head? The eyes of Mrs. Gould, watching her
husband's profile, filled with tears again. And again she seemed to see
the despair of the unfortunate Antonia.

"What would I have done if Charley had been drowned while we were
engaged?" she exclaimed, mentally, with horror. Her heart turned to ice,
while her cheeks flamed up as if scorched by the blaze of a funeral pyre
consuming all her earthly affections. The tears burst out of her eyes.

"Antonia will kill herself!" she cried out.

This cry fell into the silence of the room with strangely little effect.
Only the doctor, crumbling up a piece of bread, with his head inclined
on one side, raised his face, and the few long hairs sticking out of his
shaggy eyebrows stirred in a slight frown. Dr. Monygham thought quite
sincerely that Decoud was a singularly unworthy object for any woman's
affection. Then he lowered his head again, with a curl of his lip, and
his heart full of tender admiration for Mrs. Gould.

"She thinks of that girl," he said to himself; "she thinks of the Viola
children; she thinks of me; of the wounded; of the miners; she always
thinks of everybody who is poor and miserable! But what will she do if
Charles gets the worst of it in this infernal scrimmage those confounded
Avellanos have drawn him into? No one seems to be thinking of her."

Charles Gould, staring at the wall, pursued his reflections subtly.

"I shall write to Holroyd that the San Tome mine is big enough to take
in hand the making of a new State. It'll please him. It'll r