Absorbed in the simple yet fateful turns of the game, Anna would remain silent for hours, immersed in calculations, and scarcely aware of what went on round her. She and Monsieur Wachner—“L’Ami Fritz,” as even Sylvia had fallen into the way of calling him—seemed scarcely alive unless they were standing or sitting round a baccarat table, putting down or taking up the shining gold pieces which they treated as carelessly as if they were counters.
But it was not the easy, idle, purposeless life she was now leading that brought the pretty English widow that strange, unacknowledged feeling of entire content with life.
What made existence at Lacville so exciting and so exceptionally interesting to Sylvia Bailey was her friendship with Comte Paul de Virieu.
There is in every woman a passion for romance, and in Sylvia this passion had been baulked, not satisfied, by her first marriage.
Bill Chester loved her well and deeply, but he was her lawyer and trustee as well as her lover. He had an honest, straightforward nature, and when with her something always prompted Chester to act the part of candid friend, and the part of candid friend fits in very ill with that of lover. To take but one example of how ill his honesty of purpose served him in the matter, Sylvia had never really forgiven him the “fuss” he had made about her string of pearls.
But with the Comte de Virieu she never quite knew what to be at, and mystery is the food of romance.
At the Villa du Lac the two were almost inseparable, and yet so intelligently and quietly did the Count arrange their frequent meetings—their long walks and talks in the large deserted garden, their pleasant morning saunters through the little town—that no one, or so Sylvia believed, was aware of any special intimacy between them.
Sometimes, as they paced up and down the flower-bordered paths of the old kitchen-garden, or when, tired of walking, they made their way into the orangery and sat down on the circular stone bench by the fountain, Sylvia would remember, deep in her heart, the first time Count Paul had brought her there; and how she had been a little frightened, not perhaps altogether unpleasantly so, by his proximity!
She had feared—but she was now deeply ashamed of having entertained such a thought—that he might suddenly begin making violent love to her, that he might perhaps try to kiss her! Were not all Frenchmen of his type rather gay dogs?
But nothing—nothing of the sort had ever been within measurable distance of happening. On the contrary, he always treated her with scrupulous respect, and he never—and this sometimes piqued Sylvia—made love to her, or attempted to flirt with her. Instead, he talked to her in that intimate, that confiding fashion which a woman finds so attractive in a man when she has reason to believe his confidences are made to her alone.
When Bill Chester asked her not to do something she desired to do, Sylvia felt annoyed and impatient, but when Count Paul, as she had fallen into the way of calling him, made no secret of his wish that she should give up play, Sylvia felt touched and pleased that he should care.
Early in their acquaintance the Count had warned her against making casual friendships in the Gambling Rooms, and he even did not like her knowing—this amused Sylvia—the harmless Wachners.
When he saw her talking to Madame Wachner in the Club, Count Paul would look across the baccarat table and there would come a little frown over his eyes—a frown she alone could see.
And as the days went on, and as their intimacy seemed to grow closer and ever closer, there came across Sylvia a deep wordless wish—and she had never longed for anything so much in her life—to rescue her friend from what he admitted to be his terrible vice of gambling. In this she showed rather a feminine lack of logic, for, while wishing to wean him from his vice, she did not herself give up going to the Casino.
She would have been angry indeed had the truth been whispered to her, the truth that it was not so much her little daily gamble—as Madame Wachner called it—that made Sylvia so faithful an attendant at the Club; it was because when there she was still with Paul de Virieu, she could see and sympathise with him when he was winning, and grieve when he was losing, as alas! he often lost.
When they were not at the Casino the Comte de Virieu very seldom alluded to his play, or to the good or ill fortune which might have befallen him that day. When with her he tried, so much was clear to Sylvia, to forget his passion for gambling.
But this curious friendship of hers with Count Paul only occupied, in a material sense, a small part of Sylvia’s daily life at Lacville; and the people with whom she spent most of her time were still Anna Wolsky and Monsieur and Madame Wachner, or perhaps it should be said Madame Wachner.
It was not wonderful that Mrs. Bailey liked the cheerful woman, who was so bright and jovial in manner, and who knew, too, how to flatter so cleverly. When with Madame Wachner Sylvia was made to feel that she was not only very pretty, but also immensely attractive, and just now she was very anxious to think herself both.
Late one afternoon—and they all four always met each afternoon at the Casino—Madame Wachner suddenly invited Sylvia and Anna to come back to supper at the Châlet des Muguets.
Anna was unwilling to accept the kindly invitation. It was clear that she did not wish to waste as much time away from the Casino as going to the Wachners’ villa would involve. But, seeing that Sylvia was eager to go, she gave way.
Now on this particular afternoon Sylvia was feeling rather dull, and, as she expressed it to herself, “down on her luck,” for the Comte de Virieu had gone
