f guarding alone the
honour of his house.

Nostromo went away early. As soon as he had disappeared, walking towards
the beach, Linda stepped over the threshold and, with a haggard smile,
sat down by the side of her father.

Ever since that Sunday, when the infatuated and desperate Ramirez had
waited for her on the wharf, she had no doubts whatever. The jealous
ravings of that man were no revelation. They had only fixed with
precision, as with a nail driven into her heart, that sense of unreality
and deception which, instead of bliss and security, she had found in
her intercourse with her promised husband. She had passed on, pouring
indignation and scorn upon Ramirez; but, that Sunday, she nearly died
of wretchedness and shame, lying on the carved and lettered stone of
Teresa's grave, subscribed for by the engine-drivers and the fitters of
the railway workshops, in sign of their respect for the hero of Italian
Unity. Old Viola had not been able to carry out his desire of burying
his wife in the sea; and Linda wept upon the stone.

The gratuitous outrage appalled her. If he wished to break her
heart--well and good. Everything was permitted to Gian' Battista. But
why trample upon the pieces; why seek to humiliate her spirit? Aha! He
could not break that. She dried her tears. And Giselle! Giselle! The
little one that, ever since she could toddle, had always clung to
her skirt for protection. What duplicity! But she could not help it
probably. When there was a man in the case the poor featherheaded wretch
could not help herself.

Linda had a good share of the Viola stoicism. She resolved to say
nothing. But woman-like she put passion into her stoicism. Giselle's
short answers, prompted by fearful caution, drove her beside herself by
their curtness that resembled disdain. One day she flung herself upon
the chair in which her indolent sister was lying and impressed the mark
of her teeth at the base of the whitest neck in Sulaco. Giselle cried
out. But she had her share of the Viola heroism. Ready to faint with
terror, she only said, in a lazy voice, "Madre de Dios! Are you going to
eat me alive, Linda?" And this outburst passed off leaving no trace upon
the situation. "She knows nothing. She cannot know any thing," reflected
Giselle. "Perhaps it is not true. It cannot be true," Linda tried to
persuade herself.

But when she saw Captain Fidanza for the first time after her meeting
with the distracted Ramirez, the certitud