The Master of Greylands: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

"Run for a doctor!" cried the butler to Stephen. "He's in a faint. Run for your life!"

The butler himself did not attempt to run; he was too stout. Mr. Blake-Gordon and Stephen, both slender and light of limb, sped away without their hats. The butler raised his master's head.

"Please to ring the bell, sir, for some brandy," he said to Mr. Hill. "The maids must bring up some hot flannels, too."

"Is it possible that you can be deceived?" sobbed the clerk--"that you do not see that it is death? Oh, my poor master?"

"Death! come now, don't talk in that uncomfortable way," retorted the butler; not, however, feeling very comfortable as he said it. "What should bring death to the house in this sudden way? He is warm, too. Do please ring the bell, sir."

The doctors came without delay, two of them; for Mr. Blake-Gordon brought one, and Stephen another. But nothing could be done: it was indeed death: and the medical men thought it had taken place the best part of an hour before. The great banker of Stilborough, Peter Castlemaine, had ceased to exist.

But there was one momentous, dreadful question to be solved--what had caused the death? Had it come by God's hand and will?--or had Peter Castlemaine himself wrought it? The surgeons expressed no opinion at present; they talked in an undertone, but did not let the world share their counsels. Thomas Hill overheard one word, and it nearly sent him frantic.

"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.