“Yes—­a couple of months ago.  The mater wrote to you.”

“I have been wandering from place to place—­the letter never reached me.”

“Pneumonia, supervening upon influenza—­that is what the doctors called it; but it was really a complication of disorders, some of them of long standing.  Between you and me, Aunt Deb, he took a great deal more than was good for him latterly, and that told upon him.  His blood was bad.  You know he was always a self-indulgent man.”

Deb nodded, forgetting that it was a son who spoke.  She was saying to herself, “Bennet Goldsworthy, whom we made sure would live for ever!  Bennet Goldsworthy, of all people!  What a relief that will be to Claud!” And then she thought of her widowed sister, with a rush of pity and compunction.  He was her husband, after all.

Bob’s light attention to the subject was already gone.  He was staring at one of the great trunks covered with foreign labels.  Rosalie was telling him how many more Mrs Dalzell had.

“Oh, yes,” said Deb, confused and crimson, “I forgot to mention—­I suppose you don’t know—­that I am married.  To an old friend of our family—­your mother will know him well.  By the way, Bob, I must go and see her at once.  We’ll have some lunch first; I must wash and change my clothes.  Then will you stay at the hotel and settle Rosalie, and see to things?  No, I would rather go alone.  Stay in town and dine with me—­ and don’t look so shocked, my good boy, as if I’d cut you off with a shilling.  My marriage will make no difference to you.”  “Aunt Deb!”—­ with dignified reproach.  “As if I thought of that.”

But somehow she felt sure he did think of it.

They had luncheon together at the hotel, and sat awhile to digest it and to talk things over.  While they sipped coffee, he told her how he had furnished his bachelor rooms—­the artistic woodwork, the curios, the colours, how he had hunted for the right shade of red, what he had given for a particular rug which alone would blend and harmonise.  She was brightly interested in these things, and promised to go and see them.  She was to go to lunch next day—­he thought he could safely undertake not to poison her with bad cooking or unsound wine.  He lived in chambers in Parliament Place.  This engagement booked, she asked him for his mother’s address.

Mary lived in a small street in Richmond.

“Such a slum!” said Bob disgustedly.  “But she would do it, in spite of all that I could say.  And rushed there, too, when he had hardly been dead a week.  It was not decent, as I told her, to be advertising the sale two days after the funeral.  But she is a peculiar woman.”

“She is a Pennycuick,” said Mrs Dalzell reprovingly.  “She would not care to go on living in a house that she had ceased to have the right to live in.  I should not myself.”

“But she might have gone to another place.”

“You must insist on her going to another.”