"What is it, ma'am? Bad news?"
"Oh, most dreadful. But perhaps a mistake. I'm to find out;" and she stared stupidly at the paper that was shaking in her fingers. Then, spreading it on her lap, she read the message aloud:-"Evening paper says fatal accident to Mr. Barradine. Is this true? Wire Dale, Appledore Temperance Hotel, Stamford Street, S.E."
Then she jumped up, ran into the front room, and looked out of the window. A glance showed her that the village was in possession of some sensational tidings. There was a knot of people standing in front of the saddler's, and another--quite a little crowd--in front of the butcher's; all were talking excitedly, nodding their heads, and gesticulating.
She ran down-stairs and joined the group at the saddler's.
"I never cared for the look of the horse," Allen was saying sententiously. "And I might almost claim to have warned them--no longer ago than last March. The stud-groom was riding him at a meet, and I said, 'Mr. Yeatman, you aren't surely going to let Mr. Barradine risk his neck with hounds on that thing?' 'No,' he said, 'Mr. Barradine has bought him for hacking.' 'Oh,' I said, 'hacking and hunting are two things, of course, but--'"
Then somebody interrupted.
"Chestnut horse, wasn't it?"
"Yes," said Allen, "one of these thoroughbred weeds, without a back that you can fit with to anything bigger than a racing saddle; and I've always maintained the same thing. A bit of blood may do very well for young gentlemen, but to go and put a gentleman of Mr. Barradine's years--"
"Mind you," interposed a Roebuck stableman, "Mr. Barradine liked 'em gay. Mr. Barradine was a horseman!"
Mr. Barradine liked gay horses. Mr. Barradine was a horseman. That tremendous sound of the past tense answered the question that Mavis was breathlessly waiting to ask.
"Shocking bad business, isn't it, Mrs. Dale?"
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."