"Gastric."

"You did not think of an examination?"

"There was no need. I am perfectly certain as to the cause of his
death."

Suddenly Mrs. Brigham felt a creep as of some live horror over her
very soul. Her flesh prickled with cold, before an inflection of
his voice. She rose, tottering on weak knees.

"Where are you going?" asked Henry in a strange, breathless voice.

Mrs. Brigham said something incoherent about some sewing which she
had to do, some black for the funeral, and was out of the room.
She went up to the front chamber which she occupied. Caroline was
there. She went close to her and took her hands, and the two
sisters looked at each other.

"Don't speak, don't, I won't have it!" said Caroline finally in an
awful whisper.

"I won't," replied Emma.

That afternoon the three sisters were in the study, the large front
room on the ground floor across the hall from the south parlour,
when the dusk deepened.

Mrs. Brigham was hemming some black material. She sat close to the