"Had!" Jacqueline heard only that one word. It meant that the life of her father was a thing of the past. Hardly waiting till the fiacre could be stopped, she sprang out, rushed into the house, opened the door of her father's chamber, pushing aside a servant who tried to stop her, and fell upon her knees beside the bed where lay the body of her father, white and rigid. "Papa! My poor dear--dear papa!" The hand she pressed to her lips was as cold as ice. She raised her frightened eyes to the face over which the great change from life to death had passed. "What does it mean?" Jacqueline had never looked on death before, but she knew this was not sleep. "Oh, speak to me, papa! It is I--it is Jacqueline!" Her stepmother tried to raise her--tried to fold her in her arms. "Let me alone!" she cried with horror. It seemed to her as if her father, where he was now, so far from her, so far from everything, might have the power to look into human hearts, and know the perfidy he had known nothing of when he was living. He might see in her own heart, too, her great despair. All else seemed small and of no consequence when death was present. Oh! why had she not been a better daughter, more loving, more devoted? why had she ever cared for anything but to make him happy? She sobbed aloud, while Madame de Nailles, pressing her handkerchief to her eyes, stood at the foot of the bed, and the doctor, too, was near, whispering to some one whom Jacqueline at first had not perceived--the friend of the family, Hubert Marien. Marien there? Was it not natural that, so intimate as he had always been with the dead man, he should have hastened to offer his services to the widow? Jacqueline flung herself upon her father's corpse, as if to protect it from profanation. She had an impulse to bear it away with her to some desert spot where she alone could have wept over it. She lay thus a long time, beside herself with grief. The flowers which covered the bed and lay scattered on the floor, gave a festal appearance to the death-chamber. They had been purchased for a fete, but circumstances had changed their destination. That evening there was to have been a reception in the house of M. de Nailles, but the unexpected guest that comes without an invitation had arrived before the music and the dancers. CHAPTER XIII THE STORM BREAKS