wly," he meditated, aloud.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Sulaco outstripped Nostromo's prudence, growing rich swiftly on the
hidden treasures of the earth, hovered over by the anxious spirits of
good and evil, torn out by the labouring hands of the people. It was
like a second youth, like a new life, full of promise, of unrest, of
toil, scattering lavishly its wealth to the four corners of an excited
world. Material changes swept along in the train of material interests.
And other changes more subtle, outwardly unmarked, affected the minds
and hearts of the workers. Captain Mitchell had gone home to live on his
savings invested in the San Tome mine; and Dr. Monygham had grown older,
with his head steel-grey and the unchanged expression of his face,
living on the inexhaustible treasure of his devotion drawn upon in the
secret of his heart like a store of unlawful wealth.

The Inspector-General of State Hospitals (whose maintenance is a charge
upon the Gould Concession), Official Adviser on Sanitation to the
Municipality, Chief Medical Officer of the San Tome Consolidated Mines
(whose territory, containing gold, silver, copper, lead, cobalt,
extends for miles along the foot-hills of the Cordillera), had felt
poverty-stricken, miserable, and starved during the prolonged, second
visit the Goulds paid to Europe and the United States of America.
Intimate of the casa, proved friend, a bachelor without ties and without
establishment (except of the professional sort), he had been asked to
take up his quarters in the Gould house. In the eleven months of their
absence the familiar rooms, recalling at every glance the woman to
whom he had given all his loyalty, had grown intolerable. As the day
approached for the arrival of the mail boat Hermes (the latest addition
to the O. S. N. Co.'s splendid fleet), the doctor hobbled about more
vivaciously, snapped more sardonically at simple and gentle out of sheer
nervousness.

He packed up his modest trunk with speed, with fury, with enthusiasm,
and saw it carried out past the old porter at the gate of the Casa Gould
with delight, with intoxication; then, as the hour approached, sitting
alone in the great landau behind the white mules, a little sideways, his
drawn-in face positively venomous with the effort of self-control, and
holding a pair of new gloves in his left hand, he drove to the harbour.

His heart dilated within him so, when he saw the Goulds on the deck of
the Hermes, that his gree