Suddenly, as if her thoughts had brought him there, she saw Count Paul’s straight, slim figure turn in from the road through the gates of the Villa.
He glanced up at her window and took off his hat. He looked cool, unruffled, and self-possessed, but her eager eyes saw a change in his face. He looked very grave, and yet oddly happy. Was it possible that he had news at last of Anna Wolsky?
He mounted the stone-steps and disappeared into the house; and Sylvia, getting up, began moving restlessly about her room. She longed to go downstairs, and yet a feminine feeling of delicacy restrained her from doing so.
A great stillness brooded over everything. The heat had sent everyone indoors. M. Polperro, perhaps because of his Southern upbringing, always took an early afternoon siesta. It looked as if his servants followed his example. The Villa du Lac seemed asleep.
Sylvia went across to the other window, the window overlooking the large, shady garden, and there, glancing down, she saw Count Paul.
“Come into the garden—,” he said softly in English; and Sylvia, leaning over the bar of her window, thought he added the word “Maud”—but of course that could not have been so, for her name, as the Count knew well, was Sylvia! And equally of course he always addressed her as “Madame.”
“It’s so nice and cool up here,” she whispered back. “I don’t believe it is half so cool in the garden!”
She gazed down into his upturned face with innocent coquetry, pretending—only pretending—to hesitate as to what she would do in answer to his invitation.
But Sylvia Bailey was but an amateur at the Great Game, the game at which only two—only a man and a woman—can play, and yet which is capable of such infinite, such bewilderingly protean variations. So her next move, one which Paul de Virieu, smiling behind his moustache, foresaw—was to turn away from the window.
She ran down the broad shallow staircase very quickly, for it had occurred to her that the Count, taking her at her word, might leave the garden, and, sauntering off to the Casino, lose his money—for whatever he might be in love, Count Paul was exceedingly unlucky at cards! And lately she had begun to think that she was gradually weaning her friend from what she knew to be in his case, whatever it was in hers, and in that of many of the people about them, the terrible vice of gambling.
When, a little breathless, she joined him in the garden, she found that he had already taken two rocking-chairs into a shady corner which was out of sight of the white villa and of its inquisitive windows.
“Something very serious has happened,” said Count Paul slowly.
He took both her hands in his and looked down into her face. With surprise and concern she saw that his eyelids were red. Was it possible that Count Paul had been crying? He almost looked as if he had.
The idea of a grown-up man allowing himself to give way to emotion of that sort would have seemed absurd to Sylvia a short time ago, but somehow the thought that Paul de Virieu had shed tears made her feel extraordinarily moved.
“What is the matter?” she asked anxiously. “Has anything happened to your sister?”
“Thank God—no!” he answered hastily. “But something else, something which was to be expected, but which I did not expect, has happened—”
And then, very gravely, and at last releasing her hands, he added, “My kind godmother, the little Marquise you met last week, died last night.”
Sylvia felt the sudden sense of surprise, almost of discomfiture, the young always feel in the neighbourhood of death.
“How dreadful! She seemed quite well when we saw her that day—”
She could still hear echoing in her ears the old lady’s half-mocking but kindly compliments.
“Ah! but she was very, very old—over ninety! Why, she was supposed to be aged when she became my godmother thirty odd years ago!”
He waited a moment, and then added, quietly, “She has left me in her will two hundred thousand francs.”
“Oh, I am glad!”
Sylvia stretched out both hands impulsively, and the Comte de Virieu took first one and then the other and raised them to his lips.
“Eight thousand pounds? Does it seem a fortune to you, Madame?”
“Of course it does!” exclaimed Sylvia.
“It frees me from the necessity of being a pensioner on my brother-in-law,” he said slowly, and Sylvia felt a little chill of disappointment. Was that his only pleasure in his legacy?
“You will not play with this money?” she said, in a low voice.
“It is no use my making a promise, especially to you, that I might not be able to keep—”
He got up, and stood looking down at her.
“But I promise that I will not waste or risk this money if I can resist the temptation to do so.”
Sylvia smiled, though she felt more inclined to cry.
He seemed stung by her look.
“Do you wish me to give you my word of honour that I will not risk any of this money at the tables?” he asked, almost in a whisper.
Sylvia’s heart began to beat. Count Paul had become very pale. There was a curious expression on his face—an expression of revolt, almost of anger.
“Do you exact it?” he repeated, almost violently.
And Sylvia faltered out, “Could you keep your word if I did exact it?”
“Ah, you have learnt to know me too well!”
He walked away, leaving her full of perplexity and pain.
A few moments passed. They seemed very long moments to Sylvia Bailey. Then Count Paul turned and came back.
He sat down, and made a great effort to behave as if nothing unusual or memorable had passed between them.
“And has anything happened here?” he asked. “Is there any news of your vanished friend?”
Sylvia shook her head gravely. The Polish woman’s odd, and, to her,
