"How dare you say it gentlemen? Suicide! Mr. Peter Castlemaine would no more lift his hand against himself than you would lift it. I would stake all the poor bit of life I've got left--which won't be much now--that it is his heart that has killed him. This very afternoon he complained of a sharp pain there; a strange fluttering, he called it, and he looked white enough for a ghost. He told me he had felt the same pain and fluttering at times before. There cannot be a doubt, gentlemen, that it was his heart." The doctors nodded seemingly in assent. One thing appeared to be indisputable--that if the death was natural, no other cause than the heart could be assigned for it. The face of the dead man was calm and unruffled as that of an infant. But the elder of the doctors whispered something about an "odour." Mary Ursula came into the room when the medical men had gone. No tears were in her eyes; she was as one stunned, paralyzed: unable in her shock of bewilderment to take in the whole truth. She had deemed the room empty: but Thomas Hill turned round from the sofa at her entrance. "He has had a good deal of trouble lately, my poor dear master, and it has been too much for him, and broken his heart," he whispered in a piteous tone, the tears running down his cheeks. "God knows I'd have saved him from it if I could, my dear young lady: I'd willingly have died for him." "What kind of trouble has it been?" asked Mary Ursula, letting the old man take her hands, and gazing at him with a terrified and imploring countenance. "Money trouble, money trouble," answered the clerk. "He was not used to it, and it has broken his heart. Oh, my dear, don't grieve more than you can help!--and don't think about the future, for all I have shall be yours." "You--think--it was heart disease?" questioned Mary, in a dread, imploring whisper. "Do you really think it, Mr. Hill?" "My dear, I am sure of it. Quite sure. And I only wonder now he did not die in my arms this afternoon in the back parlour when the pain and fluttering were upon him," added Thomas Hill, half choked with his emotion. "There was a great clamour with the creditors, and it terrified him more than I thought. The fright must have struck to his heart, and killed him." She sighed deeply. The same appalled look of terror clung to her face: the reassurance did not seem to bring her the comfort that it ought. For Mary Castlemaine had overheard that one covert word of suspicion breathed by the medical men: and she had, and always would have, the awful doubt lying upon her heart.