On every hoarding, on every bare piece of wall, were spread large, flamboyant posters showing a garish but not unattractive landscape. There was the sun sparkling on a wide stretch of water edged with high trees, and gay with little sailing boats, each boat with its human freight of two lovers. Jutting out into the blue lake was a great white building, which Sylvia realised must be the Casino. And under each picture ran the words “Lacville-les-Bains” printed in very black letters.
When she got to the Gare du Nord the same advertisement stared down at her from the walls of the station and of the waiting-rooms.
It was certainly odd that she had never heard of Lacville, and that the place had never been mentioned to her by any of those of her English acquaintances who thought they knew Paris so well.
The Lacville train was full of happy, chattering people. In her first-class carriage she had five fellow-travellers—a man and woman and three children. They looked cheerful, prosperous people, and soon the husband and wife began talking eagerly together.
“I really think,” said the lady suddenly, “that we might have chosen some other place than Lacville in which to spend today! There are many places the children would have enjoyed more.”
“But there is no place,” said her husband in a jovial tone, “where I can spend an amusing hour in the afternoon.”
“Ah, my friend, I feared that was coming!” exclaimed his wife, shaking her head. “But remember what happened the last time we were at Lacville—I mean the afternoon when you lost seventy francs!”
“But you forget that other afternoon!” answered the man eagerly. “I mean the afternoon when I made a hundred francs, and bought you and the children a number of delightful little gifts with the money!”
Sylvia was amused. How quaint and odd French people were! She could not imagine such an interchange of words between an English husband and wife, especially before a stranger. And then her amusement was further increased, for the youngest child, a boy of about six, cried out that he also wished to go to the Casino with his dear papa.
“No, no, my sweet cabbage, that will happen quite soon enough, when thou art older! If thou art in the least like thy father, there will certainly come a time when thou also wilt go and lose well-earned money at the Tables,” said his mother tenderly.
“But if I win, then I shall buy thee a present,” said the sweet cabbage coaxingly.
Sylvia looked out of the window. These happy, chattering people made her feel lonely, and even a little depressed.
The country through which the train was passing was very flat and ugly—in fact, it could scarcely be called country at all. And when at last they drew up into the large station of what was once a quiet, remote village where Parisian invalids, too poor to go elsewhere, came to take medicinal waters, she felt a pang of disappointment. Lacville, as seen from the railway, is an unattractive place.
“Is this Madame’s first visit to Lacville?” asked her fellow-traveller, helping her out of the railway carriage. “If so, Madame would doubtless like to make her way to the lake. Would she care to accompany us thither?”
Sylvia hesitated. She almost felt inclined to go back to Paris by the next train. She told herself that there was no hope of finding Anna in such a large place, and that it was unlikely that this dreary-looking town would offer anything in the least pleasant or amusing on a very hot day.
But “It will be enchanting by the lake!” she heard someone say eagerly. And this chance remark made up her mind for her. After all, she might as well go and see the lake, of which everyone who mentioned Lacville spoke so enthusiastically.
Down the whole party swept along a narrow street, bordered by high white houses, shabby cafés, and little shops. Quite a crowd had left the station, and they were all now going the same way.
A turn in the narrow street, and Sylvia uttered a low cry of pleasure and astonishment!
Before her, like a scene in a play when the curtain is rung up, there suddenly appeared an immense sunlit expanse of water, fringed by high trees, and bordered by quaint, pretty châlets and villas, fantastic in shape, and each surrounded by a garden, which in many cases ran down to the edge of the lake.
To the right, stretching out over the water, its pinnacles and minarets reflected in blue translucent depths, rose what looked like a great white marble palace.
“Is it not lovely?” said the Frenchman eagerly. “And the water of the lake is so shallow, Madame, there is no fear of anyone being drowned in it! That is such an advantage when one has children.”
“And it is a hundred times more charming in the afternoon,” his wife chimed in, happily, “for then the lake is so full of little sailing-boats that you can hardly see the water. Oh, it is gay then, very gay!”
She glanced at Mrs. Bailey’s pretty grey muslin dress and elegant parasol.
“I suppose Madame is going to one of the great restaurants? As for us, we shall make our way into a wood and have our luncheon there. It is expensive going to a restaurant with children.”
She nodded pleasantly, with the easy, graceful familiarity which foreigners show in their dealings with strangers; and, shepherding their little party along, the worthy pair went briskly off by the broad avenue which girdles the lake.
Again Sylvia felt curiously alone. She was surrounded on every side by groups of merry-looking people, and already out on the lake there floated tiny white-sailed boats, each containing a man and a girl.
Everyone seemed to have a companion or companions; she alone was solitary. She even found herself wondering what she was doing there in a foreign country, by herself, when she might have been in England, in her
