"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." There was a little pause between them when Maggie sat very quietly looking at her hands. Then, smiling, she glanced up and said: "But tell me about yourself, Uncle Mathew. You've told me nothing." He fidgeted a little, shifting his thick legs, stroking his nose with his finger. "I don't know that I've anything very good to tell you, my dear. Truth is, I haven't been doing so very well lately." "Oh, Uncle, I'm sorry!" "It's nothing to make yourself miserable about, my dear. I always turn my corners. Damn rocky ones they are sometimes too. Everything's turned itself wrong these last weeks, either too soon or too late. I don't complain, all the same it makes things a bit inconvenient. Thank you for that five pounds you sent me, my dear, very helpful it was I can tell you." "Do you want another five pounds?" she asked him. He struggled with himself. His hesitation was so obvious that it was quite touching. She put her hand on his knee. "Do have another five pounds, Uncle. It won't be difficult for me at all. I've been spending nothing all these weeks when I've been ill. Please do." He shook his head firmly. "No, my dear, I won't. As I came along I said to myself, 'Now, you'll be asking Maggie for money, and when she says "Yes" you're not to take it'--and so I'm not going to. I may be a rotter--but I'm not a rotten rotter." He clung to his decision with the utmost resolve as though it were his last plank of respectability. "I can't believe," he said to her with great solemnity, "that things can really go wrong. I know too much. It isn't men like me who go under. No. No." He saw then her white face and strange grey ghostly eyes as though her soul had gone somewhere on a visit and the house was untenanted. He felt again the gulp in his throat. He bent forward, resting his fat podgy hand on her knee.