(no subject)
Tertia suddenly said, "Nick Cartledge. Who used to stay with us." She could have been protesting at last.
"What about him?"
"He's dead."
"What of?"
"Liver complaint."
"Well--he certainly worked for it."
Tertia put the paper down. Nicholas Gerard Wakelin Cartledge. For her, it was an untimely death. She said, "The old roue," trying to shrug off mortality itself; but she sat there changing into a woman who knew the dead.
Shirely Hazzard, The Transit of Venus
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Possibly the best book I have ever read.