res.

The fiacre which had brought Modeste was at the door. The old nurse
helped her young lady into it.

"What has happened to papa?" cried Jacqueline, impetuously.

There was something horrible in this sudden transition from gay
excitement to the sharpest anxiety.

"Nothing--that is to say--he is very sick. Don't tremble like that,
my darling-courage!" stammered Modeste, who was frightened by her
agitation.

"He was taken sick, you say. Where? How happened it?"

"In his study. Pierre had just brought him his letters. We thought we
heard a noise as if a chair had been thrown down, and a sort of cry. I
ran in to see. He was lying at full length on the floor."

"And now? How is he now?"

"We did what we could for him. Madame came back. He is lying on his
bed."

Modeste covered her face with her hands.

"You have not told me all. What else?"

"Mon Dieu! you knew your poor father had heart disease. The last time
the doctor saw him he thought his legs had swelled--"

"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 Jacq