The driver was as good-natured as everyone else at Lacville seemed to be. He drove his fares away from the town, and so to the very outskirts of Lacville, where there were many charming bits of wild woodland and gardens up for sale.
“Even five years ago,” he said, “much of this was forest, Mesdames; but now—well, Dame!—you can understand people are eager to sell. There are rumours that the Concession may be withdrawn from the Casino—that would be terrible, some say it would kill Lacville! It would be all the same to me, I should always find work elsewhere. But it makes everyone eager to sell—those, I mean, who have land at Lacville. There are others,” continued the man—he had turned round on his seat, and the horse was going at a foot’s pace—“who declare that it would be far better for the town—that there would be a more solid population established here—you understand, Mesdames, what I mean? The Lacville tradesmen would be as pleased, quite as pleased, or so some of them say; but, all the same, they are selling their land!”
When the two friends finally got back to the Hôtel de l’Horloge, Sylvia Bailey found that a letter, which had not been given to her that morning, contained the news that the English friends whom she had been expecting to join in Switzerland the following week had altered their plans, and were no longer going abroad.
V
Sylvia could hardly have said how it came about that she found herself established in the Villa du Lac only a week after her first visit to Lacville! But so it was, and she found the change a delightful one from every point of view.
Paris had suddenly become intolerably hot. As is the way with the Siren city when June is halfway through, the asphalt pavements radiated heat; the air was heavy, laden with strange, unpleasing odours; and even the trees, which form such delicious oases of greenery in the older quarters of the town were powdered with grey dust.
Also Anna Wolsky had become restless—quite unlike what she had been before that hour spent by her and by Sylvia Bailey in the Club at Lacville; she had gone back there three times, refusing, almost angrily, the company of her English friend. For a day or two Sylvia had thought seriously of returning to England, but she had let her pretty house at Market Dalling till the end of August; and, in spite of the heat, she did not wish to leave France.
Towards the end of the week Anna suddenly exclaimed:
“After all, why shouldn’t you come out to Lacville, Sylvia? You can’t go to Switzerland alone, and you certainly don’t want to go on staying in Paris as Paris is now! I do not ask you to go to the Pension Malfait, but come to the Villa du Lac. You will soon make acquaintances in that sort of place—I mean,” she added, “in your hotel, not in the town. We could always spend the mornings together—”
“—And I, too, could join the Club at the Casino,” interjected Sylvia, smiling.
“No, no, I don’t want you to do that!” exclaimed Anna hastily.
And then Sylvia, for some unaccountable reason, felt rather irritated. It was absurd of Anna to speak to her like that! Bill Chester, her trustee, and sometime lover, always treated her as if she was a child, and a rather naughty child, too; she would not allow Anna Wolsky to do so.
“I don’t see why not!” she cried. “You yourself say that there is no harm in gambling if one can afford it.”
This was how Sylvia Bailey came to find herself an inmate of the Villa du Lac at Lacville; and when once the owner of the Hôtel de l’Horloge had understood that in any case she meant to leave Paris, he had done all in his power to make her going to his relation, mine host of the Villa du Lac, easy and agreeable.
Sylvia learnt with surprise that she would have to pay very little more at the Villa du Lac than she had done at the Hôtel de l’Horloge; on the other hand, she could not there have the use of a sitting-room, for the good reason that there were no private sitting-rooms in the villa. But that, so she told herself, would be no hardship, and she could spend almost the whole of the day in the charming garden.
The two friends arrived at Lacville late in the afternoon, and on a Monday, that is on the quietest day of the week. And when Anna had left Sylvia at the Villa du Lac, driving off alone to her own humbler pension, the young Englishwoman, while feeling rather lonely, realised that M. Polperro had not exaggerated the charm of his hostelry.
Proudly mine host led Mrs. Bailey up the wide staircase into the spacious, airy room which had been prepared for her. “This was the bedchamber of Madame la Comtesse de Para, the friend of the Empress Eugénie,” he said.
The windows of the large, circular room, mirror-lined, and still containing the fantastic, rather showy decorations which dated from the Second Empire, overlooked the broad waters of the lake. Even now, though it was still daylight, certain romantic-natured couples had lit paper lanterns and hung them at the prows of their little sailing-boats.
The scene had a certain fairy-like beauty and stillness.
“Madame will find the Villa du Lac far more lively now” exclaimed M. Polperro cheerfully. “Last week I had only M. le Comte Paul de Virieu—no doubt Madame has heard of his brother-in-law, the Duc d’Eglemont?”
Sylvia smiled. “Yes, he won the Derby, a famous English race,” she said; and then, simply because the landlord’s love of talking was infectious, “And does the Count own horses, too?” she asked.
“Oh, no, Madame. He loves them, yes, and he is a fine horseman, but Count Paul, alas! has other things
