Mrs. Gould shook her head negatively; which was just what her husband
had expected from the strength of the argument. But she shook her
head negatively only because she thought that no one could know her
Charles--really know him for what he was but herself. The thing was
obvious. It 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. If the idea of wealth was present to them it was only in 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