Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART THIRD: THE LIGHTHOUSE 4. CHAPTER FOUR (continued)

Mrs. Gould, her colour heightened, and with glistening eyes,
looked straight before her at the sudden enormity of that
disaster. The finger-tips on one hand rested lightly on a low
little table by her side, and the arm trembled right up to the
shoulder. The sun, which looks late upon Sulaco, issuing in all
the fulness of its power high up on the sky from behind the
dazzling snow-edge of Higuerota, had precipitated the delicate,
smooth, pearly greyness of light, in which the town lies steeped
during the early hours, into sharp-cut masses of black shade and
spaces of hot, blinding glare. Three long rectangles of sunshine
fell through the windows of the sala; while just across the
street the front of the Avellanos's house appeared very sombre in
its own shadow seen through the flood of light.

A voice said at the door, "What of Decoud?"

It was Charles Gould. They had not heard him coming along the
corredor. His glance just glided over his wife and struck full at
the doctor.

"You have brought some news, doctor?"

Dr. Monygham blurted it all out at once, in the rough. For some
time after he had done, the Administrador of the San Tome mine
remained looking at him without a word. Mrs. Gould sank into a
low chair with her hands lying on her lap. A silence reigned
between those three motionless persons. Then Charles Gould
spoke--

"You must want some breakfast."

He stood aside to let his wife pass first. She caught up her
husband's hand and pressed it as she went out, raising her
handkerchief to her eyes. The sight of her husband had brought
Antonia's position to her mind, and she could not contain her
tears at the thought of the poor girl. When she rejoined the two
men in the diningroom after having bathed her face, Charles Gould
was saying to the doctor across the table--

"No, there does not seem any room for doubt."

And the doctor assented.