d 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."

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