"This young fellow," he thought to himself, "may yet become a power in
the land."

This thought flattered him, for hitherto the only account of this young
man he could give to his intimates was--

"My brother-in-law met him in one of these one-horse old German towns,
near some mines, and sent him on to me with a letter. He's one of the
Costaguana Goulds, pure-bred Englishmen, but all born in the country.
His uncle went into politics, was the last Provincial President of
Sulaco, and got shot after a battle. His father was a prominent business
man in Sta. Marta, tried to keep clear of their politics, and died
ruined after a lot of revolutions. And that's your Costaguana in a
nutshell."

Of course, he was too great a man to be questioned as to his motives,
even by his intimates. The outside world was at liberty to wonder
respectfully at the hidden meaning of his actions. He was so great a man
that his lavish patronage of the "purer forms of Christianity" (which in
its naive form of church-building amused Mrs. Gould) was looked upon by
his fellow-citizens as the manifestation of a pious and humble spirit.
But in his own circles of the financial world the taking up of such a
thing as the San Tome mine was regarded with respect, indeed, but rather
as a subject for discreet jocularity. It was a great man's caprice. In
the great Holroyd building (an enormous pile of iron, glass, and blocks
of stone at the corner of two streets, cobwebbed aloft by the radiation
of telegraph wires) the heads of principal departments exchanged
humorous glances, which meant that they were not let into the secrets
of the San Tome business. The Costaguana mail (it was never large--one