still lower note,
and found other things to say--torturing for the man at her side. Her
murmur ran on ardent and voluble. She did not seem to see her sister,
who came out with an altar-cloth she was embroidering in her hands, and
passed in front of them, silent, fresh, fair, with a quick glance and a
faint smile, to sit a little away on the other side of Nostromo.

The evening was still. The sun sank almost to the edge of a purple
ocean; and the white lighthouse, livid against the background of clouds
filling the head of the gulf, bore the lantern red and glowing, like a
live ember kindled by the fire of the sky. Giselle, indolent and demure,
raised the altar-cloth from time to time to hide nervous yawns, as of a
young panther.

Suddenly Linda rushed at her sister, and seizing her head, covered her
face with kisses. Nostromo's brain reeled. When she left her, as if
stunned by the violent caresses, with her hands lying in her lap, the
slave of the treasure felt as if he could shoot that woman. Old Giorgio
lifted his leonine head.

"Where are you going, Linda?"

"To the light, padre mio."

"Si, si--to your duty."

He got up, too, looked after his eldest daughter; then, in a tone whose
festive note seemed the echo of a mood lost in the night of ages--

"I am going in to cook something. Aha! Son! The old man knows where to
find a bottle of wine, too."

He turned to Giselle, with a change to austere tenderness.

"And you, little one, pray not to the God of priests and slaves, but to
the God of orphans, of the oppressed, of the poor, of little children,
to give thee a man like this one for a husband."

His hand rested heavily for a moment on Nostromo's shoulder; then he
went in. The hopeless slave of the San Tome silver felt at these words
the venomous fangs of jealousy biting deep into his heart. He was
appalled by the novelty of the experience, by its force, by its physical
intimacy. A husband! A husband for her! And yet it was natural that
Giselle should have a husband at some time or other. He had never
realized that before. In discovering that her beauty could belong
to another he felt as though he could kill this one of old Giorgio's
daughters also. He muttered moodily--

"They say you love Ramirez."

She shook her head without looking at him. Coppery glints rippled to and
fro on the wealth of her gold hair. Her smooth forehead had the soft,
pure sheen of a priceless pearl in the splendour of the sunset,