 Scotch and English, with remote strains of Danish
and French blood, giving him the temperament of a Puritan and an insatiable
imagination of conquest. He was completely unbending to his visitor, because of
the warm introduction the visitor had brought from Europe, and because of an
irrational liking for earnestness and determination wherever met, to whatever
end directed.
    »The Costaguana Government shall play its hand for all it's worth - and
don't you forget it, Mr. Gould. Now, what is Costaguana? It is the bottomless
pit of 10 per cent. loans and other fool investments. European capital had been
flung into it with both hands for years. Not ours, though. We in this country
know just about enough to keep indoors when it rains. We can sit and watch. Of
course, some day we shall step in. We are bound to. But there's no hurry. Time
itself has got to wait on the greatest country in the whole of God's Universe.
We shall be giving the word for everything: industry, trade, law, journalism,
art, politics, and religion, from Cape Horn clear over to Smith's Sound, and
beyond, too, if anything worth taking hold of turns up at the North Pole. And
then we shall have the leisure to take in hand the outlying islands and
continents of the earth. We shall run the world's business whether the world
likes it or not. The world can't help it - and neither can we, I guess.«
    By this he meant to express his faith in destiny in words suitable to his
intelligence, which was unskilled in the presentation of general ideas. His
intelligence was nourished on facts; and Charles Gould, whose imagination had
been permanently affected by the one great fact of a silver mine, had no
objection to this theory of the world's future. If it had seemed distasteful for
a moment it was because the sudden statement of such vast eventualities dwarfed
almost to nothingness the actual matter in hand. He and his plans and all the
mineral wealth of the Occidental Province appeared suddenly robbed of every
vestige of magnitude. The sensation was disagreeable; but Charles Gould was not
dull. Already he felt that he was producing a favourable impression; the
consciousness of that flattering fact helped him to a vague smile, which his big
interlocutor took for a smile of discreet and admiring assent. He smiled
quietly, too; and immediately Charles Gould with that mental agility mankind
will display in defence of a cherished hope, reflected that the very apparent
insignificance of his aim
