 could be felt. It
required no argument. And poor Mr. Gould, senior, who had died too soon to ever
hear of their engagement, remained too shadowy a figure for her to be credited
with knowledge of any sort whatever.
    »No, he did not understand. In my view this mine could never have been a
thing to sell. Never! After all his misery I simply could not have touched it
for money alone,« Charles Gould pursued: and she pressed her head to his
shoulder approvingly.
    These two young people remembered the life which had ended wretchedly just
when their own lives had come together in that splendour of hopeful love, which
to the most sensible minds appears like a triumph of good over all the evils of
the earth. A vague idea of rehabilitation had entered the plan of their life.
That it was so vague as to elude the support of argument made it only the
stronger. It had presented itself to them at the instant when the woman's
instinct of devotion and the man's instinct of activity receive from the
strongest of illusions their most powerful impulse. The very prohibition imposed
the necessity of success. It was as if they had been morally bound to make good
their vigorous view of life against the unnatural error of weariness and
despair. It the idea of wealth was present to them it was only so far as it was
bound with that other success. Mrs. Gould, an orphan from early childhood and
without fortune, brought up in an atmosphere of intellectual interests, had
never considered the aspects of great wealth. They were too remote, and she had
not learned that they were desirable. On the other hand, she had not known
anything of absolute want. Even the very poverty of her aunt, the Marchesa, had
nothing intolerable to a refined mind; it seemed in accord with a great grief;
it had the austerity of a sacrifice offered to a noble ideal. Thus even the most
legitimate touch of materialism was wanting in Mrs. Gould's character. The dead
man of whom she thought with tenderness (because he was Charley's father) and
with some impatience (because he had been weak), must be put completely in the
wrong. Nothing else would do to keep their prosperity without a stain on its
only real, on its immaterial side!
    Charles Gould, on his part, had been obliged to keep the idea of wealth well
to the fore; but he brought it forward as a means, not as an end. Unless the
mine was good business it could not be touched. He had to insist
