In the covered courtyard stood the Duchesse’s carriage. Count Paul motioned the footman aside and stood bareheaded while Sylvia took her place in the victoria. As he sat down by her side he suddenly observed, “My brother-in-law does not like motorcars,” and Sylvia felt secret, shamefaced gratitude to the Duc d’Eglemont, for, thanks to this prejudice of his, the moments now being spent by her alone with Count Paul were trebled.
As the carriage drove with swift, gondola-like motion through the hot streets, Sylvia felt more than ever as if she were in a new, enchanted country—that dear country called Romance, and, as if to prolong the illusion, the Count began to talk what seemed to her the language of that country.
“Every Frenchman,” he exclaimed, abruptly, “is in love with love, and when you hear—as you may do sometimes, Madame—that a Frenchman is rarely in love with his own wife, pray answer that this is quite untrue! For it often happens that in his wife a Frenchman discovers the love he has sought elsewhere in vain.”
He looked straight before him as he added: “As for marriage—well, marriage is in my country regarded as a very serious matter indeed! No Frenchman goes into marriage as light-heartedly as does the average Englishman, and as have done, for instance, so many of my own English schoolfellows. No, to a Frenchman his marriage means everything or nothing, and if he loved a woman it would appear to him a dastardly action to ask her to share his life if he did not believe that life to be what would be likely to satisfy her, to bring her honour and happiness.”
Sylvia turned to him, and, rather marvelling at her own temerity, she asked a fateful question:
“But would love ever make the kind of Frenchman you describe give up a way of life that was likely to make his wife unhappy?”
Count Paul looked straight into the blue eyes which told him so much more than their owner knew they told.
“Yes! He might easily give up that life for the sake of a beloved woman. But would he remain always faithful in his renunciation? That is the question which none, least of all himself, can answer!”
The victoria was now crossing one of the bridges which are, perhaps, the noblest possession of outdoor Paris.
Count Paul changed the subject. He had seen with mingled pain and joy how much his last honest words had troubled her.
“My brother-in-law has never cared to move west, as so many of his friends have done,” he observed. “He prefers to remain in the old family house that was built by his great-grandfather before the French Revolution.”
Soon they were bowling along a quiet, sunny street, edged with high walls overhung with trees. The street bore the name of Babylon.
And indeed there was something almost Babylonian, something very splendid in the vast courtyard which formed the centre of what appeared, to Sylvia’s fascinated eyes, a grey stone palace. The long rows of high, narrow windows which now encompassed her were all closed, but with the clatter of the horses’ hoofs on the huge paving-stones the great house stirred into life.
The carriage drew up. Count Paul jumped out and gave Sylvia his hand. Huge iron doors, that looked as if they could shut out an invading army, were flung open, and after a moment’s pause, Paul de Virieu led Sylvia Bailey across the threshold of the historic Hôtel d’Eglemont.
She had never seen, she had never imagined, such pomp, such solemn state, as that which greeted her, and there came across her a childish wish that Anna Wolsky and the Wachners could witness the scene—the hall hung with tapestries given to an ancestor of the Duc d’Eglemont by Louis the Fourteenth, the line of powdered footmen, and the solemn majordomo who ushered them up the wide staircase, at the head of which there stood a slender, white-clad young woman, with a sweet, eager face.
This was the first time Sylvia Bailey had met a duchess, and she was perhaps a little surprised to see how very unpretentious a duchess could be!
Marie-Anne d’Eglemont spoke in a low, almost timid voice, her English being far less good than her brother’s, and yet how truly kind and highly-bred she at once showed herself, putting Sylvia at her ease, and appearing to think there was nothing at all unusual in Mrs. Bailey’s friendship with Paul de Virieu!
And then, after they had lunched in an octagon room of which each panel had been painted by Van Loo, and which opened on a garden where the green glades and high trees looked as if they must be far from a great city, there suddenly glided in a tiny old lady, dressed in a sweeping black gown and little frilled lace cap.
Count Paul bowing low before her, kissed her waxen-looking right hand.
“My dear godmother, let me present to you Mrs. Bailey,” and Sylvia felt herself being closely, rather pitilessly, inspected by shrewd though not unkindly eyes—eyes sunken, dimmed by age, yet seeing more, perhaps, than younger eyes would have seen.
The old Marquise beckoned to Count Paul, and together they slowly walked through into the garden and paced away down a shaded alley. For the first time Sylvia and Marie-Anne d’Eglemont were alone together.
“I wish to thank you for your kindness to my poor Paul,” the Duchesse spoke in a low, hesitating voice. “You have so much influence over him, Madame.”
Sylvia shook her head.
“Ah! But yes, you have!” She looked imploringly at Sylvia. “You know what I mean? You know what I would ask you to do? My husband could give Paul work in the country, work he would love, for he adores horses, if only he could be rescued from this terrible infatuation, this passion for play.”
She stopped abruptly, for the Count and his little, fairy-like godmother had turned round, and were now coming towards them.
Sylvia rose instinctively to her feet,
