“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.