She did not reply; but nobody noticed her silence or agitation. They all went on talking; and she only thought: "He is dead. He is dead. He is dead." She was temporarily tongue-tied, awestricken, full of a strange superstitious horror.
Presently Allen spoke to her again. "There'll never be such another kind gentleman in our times, Mrs. Dale; nor one so open-handed. And it's not only the gentry that's going to mourn him. The pore hev lost a good friend."
"Yes," she whispered. "Indeed they have. Indeed they have."
Miss Waddy came out of her absurd little post-card shop and kept saying, "Oh, dear!" She, like almost everybody else in the village except Mavis Dale and Mary, had known the news for hours; but she was greedy for the more and more particularized information that every newcomer brought with him along the road from Manninglea.
"How was the body taken to the Abbey?"
"Sent one of the carriages."
"Oh, dear!"
They continued to talk; and Mavis, listening, for a few moments felt gladness, nothing but gladness. He had gone out of their lives forever. There could be no divorce. Now that he was dead, she would be forgiven. Then again she felt the horror of it. The thing was like an answer to her secret prayer or wish—like the mysterious overwhelming consequence of her curse. It was as though in cursing him she had doomed him to destruction.
"They caught the horse last night, didn't they?"
"Yes. Some chaps at Abbey Cross Roads see un go gallopin' by, and followed un up Beacon Hill. Catched un in the quag by th' old gravel pits."