the San Tome mine. She jested most agreeably, they thought; and Charles
Gould, besides knowing thoroughly what he was about, had shown himself
a real hustler. These facts caused them to be well disposed towards his
wife. An unmistakable enthusiasm, pointed by a slight flavour of irony,
made her talk of the mine absolutely fascinating to her visitors, and
provoked them to grave and indulgent smiles in which there was a good
deal of deference. Perhaps had they known how much she was inspired by
an idealistic view of success they would have been amazed at the state
of her mind as the Spanish-American ladies had been amazed at the
tireless activity of her body. She would--in her own words--have
been for them "something of a monster." However, the Goulds were in
essentials a reticent couple, and their guests departed without the
suspicion of any other purpose but simple profit in the working of a
silver mine. Mrs. Gould had out her own carriage, with two white mules,
to drive them down to the harbour, whence the Ceres was to carry them
off into the Olympus of plutocrats. Captain Mitchell had snatched at the
occasion of leave-taking to remark to Mrs. Gould, in a low, confidential
mutter, "This marks an epoch."

Mrs. Gould loved the patio of her Spanish house. A broad flight of stone
steps was overlooked silently from a niche in the wall by a Madonna in
blue robes with the crowned child sitting on her arm. Subdued voices
ascended in the early mornings from the paved well of the quadrangle,
with the stamping of horses and mules led out in pairs to drink at the
cistern. A tangle of slender bamboo stems drooped its narrow, blade-like
leaves over the square pool of water, and the fat coachman sat muffled
up on the edge, holding lazily the ends of halters in his hand.
Barefooted servants passed to and fro, issuing from dark, low doorways
below; two laundry girls with baskets of washed linen; the baker with
the tray of bread made for the day; Leonarda--her own camerista--bearing
high up, swung from her hand raised above her raven black head, a bunch
of starched under-skirts dazzlingly white in the slant of sunshine. Then
the old porter would hobble in, sweeping the flagstones, and the
house was ready for the day. All the lofty rooms on three sides of
the quadrangle opened into each other and into the corredor, with its
wrought-iron railings and a border of flowers, whence, like the lady of
the mediaeval castle, she could witness fro