ent on. "We all had our rewards--the engineer-in-chief,
Captain Mitchell----"

"We saw him," interrupted Mrs. Gould, in her charming voice. "The poor
dear man came up from the country on purpose to call on us in our hotel
in London. He comported himself with great dignity, but I fancy he
regrets Sulaco. He rambled feebly about 'historical events' till I felt
I could have a cry."

"H'm," grunted the doctor; "getting old, I suppose. Even Nostromo is
getting older--though he is not changed. And, speaking of that fellow, I
wanted to tell you something----"

For some time the house had been full of murmurs, of agitation. Suddenly
the two gardeners, busy with rose trees at the side of the garden
arch, fell upon their knees with bowed heads on the passage of Antonia
Avellanos, who appeared walking beside her uncle.

Invested with the red hat after a short visit to Rome, where he had
been invited by the Propaganda, Father Corbelan, missionary to the
wild Indians, conspirator, friend and patron of Hernandez the robber,
advanced with big, slow strides, gaunt and leaning forward, with his
powerful hands clasped behind his back. The first Cardinal-Archbishop
of Sulaco had preserved his fanatical and morose air; the aspect of a
chaplain of bandits. It was believed that his unexpected elevation
to the purple was a counter-move to the Protestant invasion of Sulaco
organized by the Holroyd Missionary Fund. Antonia, the beauty of her
face as if a little blurred, her figure slightly fuller, advanced with
her light walk and her high serenity, smiling from a distance at Mrs.
Gould. She had brought her uncle over to see dear Emilia, without
ceremony, just for a moment before the siesta.

When all were seated again, Dr. Monygham, who had come to dislike
heartily everybody who approached Mrs. Gould with any intimacy, kept
aside, pretending to be lost in profound meditation. A louder phrase of
Antonia made him lift his head.

"How can we abandon, groaning under oppression, those who have been
our countrymen only a few years ago, who are our countrymen now?" Miss
Avellanos was saying. "How can we remain blind, and deaf without pity to
the cruel wrongs suffered by our brothers? There is a remedy."

"Annex the rest of Costaguana to the order and prosperity of Sulaco,"
snapped the doctor. "There is no other remedy."

"I am convinced, senor doctor," Antonia said, with the earnest calm
of invincible resolution, "that this was from the first