poor. But
there is something accursed in wealth. Senora, shall I tell you where
the treasure is? To you alone. . . . Shining! Incorruptible!"

A pained, involuntary reluctance lingered in his tone, in his eyes,
plain to the woman with the genius of sympathetic intuition. She averted
her glance from the miserable subjection of the dying man, appalled,
wishing to hear no more of the silver.

"No, Capataz," she said. "No one misses it now. Let it be lost for
ever."

After hearing these words, Nostromo closed his eyes, uttered no word,
made no movement. Outside the door of the sick-room Dr. Monygham,
excited to the highest pitch, his eyes shining with eagerness, came up
to the two women.

"Now, Mrs. Gould," he said, almost brutally in his impatience, "tell me,
was I right? There is a mystery. You have got the word of it, have you
not? He told you----"

"He told me nothing," said Mrs. Gould, steadily.

The light of his temperamental enmity to Nostromo went out of Dr.
Monygham's eyes. He stepped back submissively. He did not believe Mrs.
Gould. But her word was law. He accepted her denial like an inexplicable
fatality affirming the victory of Nostromo's genius over his own. Even
before that woman, whom he loved with secret devotion, he had been
defeated by the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores, the man who had lived
his own life on the assumption of unbroken fidelity, rectitude, and
courage!

"Pray send at once somebody for my carriage," spoke Mrs. Gould from
within her hood. Then, turning to Giselle Viola, "Come nearer me, child;
come closer. We will wait here."

Giselle Viola, heartbroken and childlike, her face veiled in her falling
hair, crept up to her side. Mrs. Gould slipped her hand through the arm
of the unworthy daughter of old Viola, the immaculate republican, the
hero without a stain. Slowly, gradually, as a withered flower droops,
the head of the girl, who would have followed a thief to the end of the
world, rested on the shoulder of Dona Emilia, the first lady of Sulaco,
the wife of the Senor Administrador of the San Tome mine. And Mrs.
Gould, feeling her suppressed sobbing, nervous and excited, had the
first and only moment of bitterness in her life. It was worthy of Dr.
Monygham himself.

"Console yourself, child. Very soon he would have forgotten you for his
treasure."

"Senora, he loved me. He loved me," Giselle whispered, despairingly. "He
loved me as no one had ever been loved before."

"I