And Mrs. Gullick arose, with bustling courtesy, to welcome her landlord, the Fellow of St. Gatien's.
Immediately there was a stir among the men seated in the ingle. One by one--some with a muttered pretence at excuse, others with shame-faced awkwardness--they shouldered and shuffled out of the room. Maitland's appearance had produced its usual effect, and he was left alone with his tenant.
"Well, Mrs. Gullick," said poor Maitland, ruefully, "I came here for a chat with our friends--a little social relaxation--on economic questions, and I seem to have frightened them all away."
"Oh, sir, they're a rough lot, and don't think themselves company for the likes of you. But," said Mrs. Gullick, eagerly--with the delight of the oldest aunt in telling the saddest tale--"you 've heard this hawful story? Poor Miss Margaret, sir! It makes my blood--"
What physiological effect on the circulation Mrs. Gullick was about to ascribe to alarming intelligence will never be known; for Maitland, growing a little more pallid than usual, interrupted her:
"What has happened to Miss Margaret? Tell me, quick!"
"Nothing to _herself_, poor lamb, but her poor father, sir."
"Gone, sir--gone! In a cartload o' snow, this very evening, he was found, just outside o* this very door."
"In a cartload of snow!" cried Maitland. "Do you mean that he went away in it, or that he was found in it dead?"
"Yes, indeed, sir; dead for many hours, the doctor said; and in this very house he had been no later than last night, and quite steady, sir, I do assure you. He had been steady--oh, steady for weeks."
Maitland assumed an expression of regret, which no doubt he felt to a certain extent But in his sorrow there could not but have been some relief. For Maitland, in the course of his philanthropic labors, had known old Dicky Shields, the naturalist and professional tattooer, as a hopeless _mauvais sujet_. But Dicky's daughter, Margaret, had been a daisy flourishing by the grimy waterside, till the young social reformer transplanted her to a school in the purer air of Devonshire. He was having her educated there, and after she was educated--why, then, Maitland had at one time entertained his own projects or dreams. In the way of their accomplishment Dicky Shields had been felt as an obstacle; not that he objected--on the other hand, he had made Maitland put his views in writing. There were times--there had lately, above all, been times--when Maitland reflected uneasily on the conditional promises in this document Dicky was not an eligible father-in-law, however good and pretty a girl his daughter might be. But now Dicky had ceased to be an obstacle; he was no longer (as he certainly had been) in any man's way; he was nobody's enemy now, not even his own.