ueline 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

Monsieur de Nailles was dead, struck down suddenly by what is called
indefinitely heart-failure. The trouble in that organ from which he had
long suffered had brought on what might have been long foreseen, and
yet every one seemed, stupefied by the event. It came upon them like a
thunderbolt. It often happens so when people who are really ill persist
in doing all that may be done with safety by other persons. They
persuaded themselves, and those about them are easily persuaded, that
small remedies will prolong indefinitely a state of things which is
precarious to the last degree. Friends are ready to believe, when the
sufferer complains that his work is too hard for him, that he thinks too
much of his ailments and that he exaggerates trifles to which they
are well accustomed, but which are best known to him alone. When M. de
Nailles, several weeks before his death, had asked to be excused and to
stay at home instead of attending some large gathering, his wife, and
even Jacqueline, would try to convince him that a little amusement
would be good for him; they were unwilling to leave him to the repose he
needed, prescribed for him by the doctors, who had been unanimous that
he must "put down the brakes," give less attention to business, avoid
late hours and over-exertion of all kinds. "And, above all," said one
of the lights of science whom he had consulted recently about certain
feelings of faintness which were a bad symptom, "above all, you must
keep yourself from mental anxiety."

How could he, when his fortune, already much impai