Only when they reached the anteroom and a little crowd of friends and counsel clustered round her, she turned her head and looked at Austin, that faint unearthly smile still on her lips, and said, quite distinctly:
“It is not the end. There is still the light—the great protection!”
With that she swayed forward, and Austin held and lowered her gently to the floor.
“Oh, she’s dead!” cried Winnie, kneeling distractedly beside her. “Grace—Grace, darling!”
“She’s only fainted, thank God! It’s better for her,” said Austin huskily.
CHAPTER XXV THE LAST HOPE
In the room that had once been Paula Rawson’s boudoir Sir Robert Rawson lay on his wheeled couch, drawn up near a blazing fire. Of late he had extended his daily visits to this room of poignant memories, spending many hours there, with Thomson or Perkins in attendance on him—usually Perkins, for since the evening of Boris Melikoff’s visit, when Sir Robert had detected and rebuked that “error of judgment” in his trusted old servant, he had not resumed the confidential relations that had existed between them for so many years. He never again referred, in words, to the incident, but an impalpable barrier had risen between master and man that in all probability would never be surmounted.
Over the mantelpiece hung the famous half-length portrait of Paula which, entitled “The Jade Necklace,” had been the picture of its year at the Academy, a masterpiece that showed her in all her imperious beauty, dressed in a robe of filmy black over which fell a superb chain of jade beads, the one startling note of vivid colour in the whole picture.