“I can’t bear to be spied upon. Oh, the cause? Yes, there is a cause; there is something else that is lost besides Antonia’s favourite fan. As I was walking home after seeing Don Jose and Antonia to their house, the Capataz de Cargadores, riding down the street, spoke to me.” “Has anything happened to the Violas?” inquired Mrs. Gould. “The Violas? You mean the old Garibaldino who keeps the hotel where the engineers live? Nothing happened there. The Capataz said nothing of them; he only told me that the telegraphist of the Cable Company was walking on the Plaza, bareheaded, looking out for me. There is news from the interior, Mrs. Gould. I should rather say rumours of news.” “Good news?” said Mrs. Gould in a low voice. “Worthless, I should think. But if I must define them, I would say bad. They are to the effect that a two days’ battle had been fought near Sta. Marta, and that the Ribierists are defeated. It must have happened a few days ago--perhaps a week. The rumour has just reached Cayta, and the man in charge of the cable station there has telegraphed the news to his colleague here. We might just as well have kept Barrios in Sulaco.” “What’s to be done now?” murmured Mrs. Gould. “Nothing. He’s at sea with the troops. He will get to Cayta in a couple of days’ time and learn the news there. What he will do then, who can say? Hold Cayta? Offer his submission to Montero? Disband his army--this last most likely, and go himself in one of the O.S.N. Company’s steamers, north or south--to Valparaiso or to San Francisco, no matter where. Our Barrios has a great practice in exiles and repatriations, which mark the points in the political game.” Decoud, exchanging a steady stare with Mrs. Gould, added, tentatively, as it were, “And yet, if we had could have been done.” “Montero victorious, completely victorious!” Mrs. Gould breathed out in a tone of unbelief. “A canard, probably. That sort of bird is hatched in great numbers in such times as these. And even if it were true? Well, let us put things at their worst, let us say it is true.” “Then everything is lost,” said Mrs. Gould, with the calmness of despair. Suddenly she seemed to divine, she seemed to see Decoud’s tremendous excitement under its cloak of studied carelessness. It was, indeed, becoming visible in his audacious and watchful stare, in the curve, half-reckless, half-contemptuous, of his lips. And a French phrase came upon them as if, for this Costaguanero of the Boulevard, that had been the only forcible language-- “_Non, Madame. Rien n’est perdu_.” It electrified Mrs. Gould out of her benumbed attitude, and she said, vivaciously-- “What would you think of doing?” But already there was something of mockery in Decoud’s suppressed excitement.