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Where could we begin life afresh? We are in now for
all that there is in us."

He bent over her upturned face very tenderly and a little remorsefully.
Charles Gould was competent because he had no illusions. The Gould
Concession had to fight for life with such weapons as could be found at
once in the mire of a corruption that was so universal as almost to lose
its significance. He was prepared to stoop for his weapons. For a moment
he felt as if the silver mine, which had killed his father, had decoyed
him further than he meant to go; and with the roundabout logic of
emotions, he felt that the worthiness of his life was bound up with
success. There was no going back.



CHAPTER SEVEN

Mrs. Gould was too intelligently sympathetic not to share that feeling.
It made life exciting, and she was too much of a woman not to like
excitement. But it frightened her, too, a little; and when Don Jose
Avellanos, rocking in the American chair, would go so far as to say,
"Even, my dear Carlos, if you had failed; even if some untoward event
were yet to destroy your work--which God forbid!--you would have
deserved well of your country," Mrs. Gould would look up from the
tea-table profoundly at her unmoved husband stirring the spoon in the
cup as though he had not heard a word.

Not that Don Jose anticipated anything of the sort. He could not praise
enough dear Carlos's tact and courage. His English, rock-like quality
of character was his best safeguard, Don Jose affirmed; and, turning to
Mrs. Gould, "As to you, Emilia, my soul"--he would address her with the
familiarity of his age and old friendship--"you are as true a patriot as
though you had been born in our midst."

This might have been less or more than the truth. Mrs. Gould,
accompanying her husband all over the province in the search for labour,
had seen the land with a deeper glance than a trueborn Costaguanera
could have done. In her travel-worn riding habit, her face powdered
white like a plaster cast, with a further protection of a small silk
mask during the heat of the day, she rode on a well-shaped, light-footed
pony in the centre of a little cavalcade. Two mozos de campo,
picturesque in great hats, with spurred bare heels, in white embroidered
calzoneras, leather jackets and striped ponchos, rode ahead with
carbines across their shoulders, swaying in unison to the pace of the
horses. A tropilla of pack mules brought up the rear in charge of a thin
brown muleteer, sitting his long-eared beast very near the tail, legs
thrust far forward, the wide brim of his hat set far back, making a sort
of halo for his head. An old Costaguana officer, a retired senior major
of humble origin, but patronized by the first families on account of
his Blanco opinions, had been recommended by Don Jose for commissary and
organizer of that expedition. The points of his grey moustache hung far
below his chin, and, riding on Mrs. Gould's left hand, he looked about
with kindly eyes, pointing out the features of the country, telling the

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