She looked down at her hands.
"No," she said.
"And that hypocritical minister of theirs hasn't been at you again?"
"Mr. Warlock's dead," she answered very quietly.
"Warlock dead!" Uncle Mathew half rose from his chair in his astonishment. "That fellow dead! Well, I'm damned, indeed I am. That fellow—! Well, there's a good riddance! I know it isn't good form to speak about a man who's kicked the bucket otherwise than kindly, but he was a weight on my chest that fellow was, with his long white beard and his soft voice ... Well, well. To be sure! Whatever will my poor sisters do? And what's happened to that young chap, his son, nice lad he was, took dinner with us that day last year?"
"He's gone away," said Maggie. Mathew, stupid though he was, heard behind the quiet of Maggie's voice a warning. He flung her a hurried surreptitious look. Her face was perfectly composed, her hands still upon her lap. Nevertheless he said to himself, "Danger there, my boy! Something's happened there!"
And yet his curiosity drove him for a moment further.
"Gone, has he? Where to?"
"He went abroad," said Maggie, "after his father's death. I don't know where he's gone."
"Oh, did he? Pity! Restless, I expect—I was at his age."