LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

to the Châlet, and there he made the most excellent coffee for them all, and even Mrs. Bailey, who was treated as the guest of honour, though she knew that coffee was not good for her, was tempted into taking some.

      One thing, however, rather dashed her pleasure in the entertainment.

      Madame Wachner, forgetting for once her usual tact, suddenly made a violent attack on the Comte de Virieu.

      They were all talking of the habitués of the Casino: "The only one I do not like," she exclaimed, in French, "is that Count—if indeed Count he be? He is so arrogant, so proud, so rude! We have known him for years, have L'Ami Fritz and I, for we are always running across him at Monte Carlo and other places. But no, each time we meet he looks at us as if he was a fish. He does not even nod!"

      "When the Comte de Virieu is actually playing, he does not know that other people exist," said Anna Wolsky, slowly.

      She had looked across at Sylvia and noticed her English friend's blush and look of embarrassment. "I used to watch him two years ago at Monte Carlo, and I have never seen a man more absorbed in his play."

      "That is no excuse!" cried Madame Wachner, scornfully. "Besides, that is only half the truth. He is ashamed of the way he is spending his life, and he hates the people who see him doing it! It is shameful to be so idle. A strong young man doing nothing, living on charity, so they say! And he despises all those who do what he himself is not ashamed to do."

      And Sylvia, looking across at her, said to herself with a heavy sigh that this was true. Madame Wachner had summed up Count Paul very accurately.

      At last there came the sound of a carriage in the quiet lane outside.

      "Fritz! Go and see if that is the carriage I ordered to come here at nine o'clock," said his wife sharply; and then, as he got up silently to obey her, she followed him out into the passage, and Sylvia, who had very quick ears, heard her say, in low, vehement tones, "I work and work and work, but you do nothing! Do try and help me—it is for your sake I am taking all this trouble!"

      What could these odd words mean? At what was Madame Wachner working?

      A sudden feeling of discomfort came over Sylvia. Then the stout, jolly-looking woman was not without private anxieties and cares? There had been something so weary as well as so angry in the tone in which Madame Wachner spoke to her beloved "Ami Fritz."

      A moment later he was hurrying towards the gate.

      "Sophie," he cried out from the garden, "the carriage is here! Come along—we have wasted too much time already—"

      Like Anna Wolsky, Monsieur Wachner grudged every moment spent away from the tables.

      Madame Wachner hurried her two guests into her bed-room to put on their hats.

      Anna Wolsky walked over to the window.

      "What a strange, lonely place to live in!" she said, and drew the lace shawl she was wearing a little more closely about her thin shoulders. "And that wood over there—I should be afraid to live so near a wood! I should think that there might be queer people concealed there."

      "Bah! Why should we be frightened, even if there were queer people there!"

      "Well, but sometimes you must have a good deal of money in this house."

      Madame Wachner laughed.

      "When we have so much money that we cannot carry it about, and that, alas! is not very often—but still, when Fritz makes a big win, we go into Paris and bank the money."

      "I do not trouble to do that," said Anna, "for I always carry all my money about with me. What do you do?" she turned to Sylvia Bailey.

      "I leave it in my trunk at the hotel," said Sylvia. "The servants at the Villa du Lac seem to be perfectly honest—in fact they are mostly related to the proprietor, M. Polperro."

      "Oh, but that is quite wrong!" exclaimed Madame Wachner, eagerly. "You should never leave your money in the hotel; you should always carry it about with you—in little bags like this. See!"

      Again she suddenly lifted the light alpaca skirt she was wearing, as she had done before, in this very room, on the occasion of Sylvia's first visit to the Châlet. "That is the way to carry money in a place like this!" she said, smiling. "But now hurry, or all our evening will be gone!"

      They left the house, and hastened down the garden to the gate, where L'Ami Fritz received his wife with a grumbling complaint that they had been so long.

      And he was right, for the Casino was very full. Sylvia made no attempt to play. Somehow she did not care for the Club when Count Paul was not there.

      She was glad when she was at last able to leave the others for the Villa du Lac.

      Anna Wolsky accompanied her friend to the entrance of the Casino. The Comte de Virieu was just coming in as Sylvia went out; bowing distantly to the two ladies, he hurried through the vestibule towards the Club.

      Sylvia's heart sank. Not even after spending a day with his beloved sister could he resist the lure of play!

      Chapter XI

       Table of Contents

      During much of the night that followed Sylvia lay awake, her mind full of the Comte de Virieu, and of the strange friendship which had sprung up between them.

      Their brief meeting at the door of the Casino had affected her very painfully. As he had passed her with a distant bow, a look of shame, of miserable unease, had come over Count Paul's face.

      Yes, Madame Wachner had summed him up very shrewdly, if unkindly. He was ashamed, not only of the way in which he was wasting his life, but also of the company into which his indulgence of his vice of gambling brought him.

      And Sylvia—it was a bitter thought—was of that company. That fact must be faced by her. True, she was not a gambler in the sense that most of the people she met and saw daily at the Casino were gamblers, but that was simply because the passion of play did not absorb her as it did them. It was her good fortune, not any virtue in herself, that set her apart from Anna Wolsky.

      And now she asked herself—or rather her conscience asked her—whether she would not do well to leave Lacville; to break off this strange and—yes, this dangerous intimacy with a man of whom she knew so very little, apart from the great outstanding fact that he was a confirmed gambler, and that he had given up all that makes life worth living to such a man as he, in order to drag on a dishonoured, purposeless life at one or other of the great gambling centres of the civilised world?

      And yet the thought of going away from Lacville was already intolerable to Sylvia. There had arisen between the Frenchman and herself a kind of close, wordless understanding and sympathy which she, at any rate, still called "friendship." But she would probably have assented to Meredith's words, "Friendship, I fancy, means one heart between two."

      At last she fell into a troubled sleep, and dreamt a disturbing dream.

      She found herself wandering about the Châlet des Muguets, trying to find a way out of the locked and shuttered building. The ugly little rooms were empty. It was winter, and she was shivering with cold. Someone must have locked her in by mistake. She had been forgotten....

      "Toc, toc, toc!" at the door. And Sylvia sat up in bed relieved of her nightmare. It was eight o'clock! She had overslept herself. Félicie was bringing in her tea, and on the tray lay a letter addressed in a handwriting Sylvia did not know, and on which was a French stamp.

      She turned the pale-grey envelope over doubtfully, wondering if it was really meant for her. But yes—of that there could be no doubt, for it was addressed, "Madame Bailey, Villa du Lac, Lacville-les-Bains."

      She opened it to find that the note contained a gracefully-worded invitation to déjeuner for the next day, and the signature ran—"Marie-Anne d'Eglemont."

      Why,

Скачать книгу