e mine by the hour with her husband with unwearied interest and
satisfaction. And dropping her eyelids expressively, she added--

"What do you feel about it, Charley?"

Then, surprised at her husband's silence, she raised her eyes, opened
wide, as pretty as pale flowers. He had done with the spurs, and,
twisting his moustache with both hands, horizontally, he contemplated
her from the height of his long legs with a visible appreciation of her
appearance. The consciousness of being thus contemplated pleased Mrs.
Gould.

"They are considerable men," he said.

"I know. But have you listened to their conversation? They don't seem to
have understood anything they have seen here."

"They have seen the mine. They have understood that to some purpose,"
Charles Gould interjected, in defence of the visitors; and then his
wife mentioned the name of the most considerable of the three. He was
considerable in finance and in industry. His name was familiar to many
millions of people. He was so considerable that he would never have
travelled so far away from the centre of his activity if the doctors had
not insisted, with veiled menaces, on his taking a long holiday.

"Mr. Holroyd's sense of religion," Mrs. Gould pursued, "was shocked
and disgusted at the tawdriness of the dressed-up saints in the
cathedral--the worship, he called it, of wood and tinsel. But it seemed
to me that he looked upon his own God as a sort of influential partner,
who gets his share of profits in the endowment of churches. That's a
sort of idolatry. He told me he endowed churches every year, Charley."

"No end of them," said Mr. Gould, marvelling inwardly at the mobility
of her physiognomy. "All over the country. He's famous for that sort of
munificence." "Oh, he didn't boast," Mrs. Gould declared, scrupulously.
"I believe he's really a good man, but so stupid! A poor Chulo who
offers a little silver arm or leg to thank his god for a cure is as
rational and more touching."

"He's at the head of immense silver and iron interests," Charles Gould
observed.

"Ah, yes! The religion of silver and iron. He's a very civil man, though
he looked awfully solemn when he first saw the Madonna on the staircase,
who's only wood and paint; but he said nothing to me. My dear Charley,
I heard those men talk among themselves. Can it be that they really wish
to become, for an immense consideration, drawers of water and hewers of
wood to all the countries and nations of t