“And will you not come back again?” asked Madame Wachner inquisitively.
“I may come back again if Mrs. Bailey is still here; but I do not suppose she will be, for I intend to spend at least a fortnight in Switzerland.”
The three were now approaching the gates of the Villa du Lac.
“Well, Sylvia,” cried Chester. “I suppose I must now say good night? I do not envy you your ill-gotten gains!” He spoke lightly, but there was an undercurrent of reproach in his voice, or so Sylvia fancied.
“Good night!” she said, and her voice was tremulous.
As she held out her hand the little fancy bag which held all her winnings, the bundle of notes and loose pieces of gold, fell to the ground.
Madame Wachner stooped down and picked it up. “How ’eavy it is!” she exclaimed, enviously. “Good gracious, Sylvia! What a lot you must ’ave made tonight?”
“And the notes don’t weigh much,” said Sylvia. “It’s only the gold that is heavy!”
But she was not thinking of what she was saying. Her heart was full of anguish. How could Paul de Virieu have been so mad as to risk such an immense sum, a tenth part of the fortune—for fortune it was—which had just been left to him?
Sylvia hated herself for having contributed to his losses. She knew that it was absurd that she should feel this, for the same cards would certainly have been dealt to whoever had happened to take them from the croupier. But still, superstition is part of the virus which fills the gambler’s blood, and she had certainly won a considerable part of the money Count Paul had lost tonight.
“May I see you back to your house?” asked Chester of Madame Wachner.
“Oh no, Monsieur, I must go back to the Casino and look after Fritz! ’E is a child—quite a child as regards money.” Madame Wachner sighed heavily. “No, no, you go ’ome to bed in the Pension Malfait.”
“I shouldn’t think of doing such a thing!” he said kindly. “I will come back with you to the Casino, and together we will persuade Monsieur Wachner to go home. He has had time to make or lose a good deal of money in the last few minutes.”
“Yes, indeed he ’as—” again Madame Wachner sighed, and Chester’s heart went out to her. She was a really nice old woman—clever and intelligent, as well as cheerful and brave. It seemed a great pity that she should be cursed with a gambler for a husband.
As they went back into the Casino they could hear the people round them talking of the Comte de Virieu, and of the high play that had gone on at the club that evening.
“No, he is winning now,” they heard someone say. And Madame Wachner looked anxious. If Count Paul were winning, then her Fritz must be losing.
And alas! her fears were justified. When they got up into the Baccarat Room they found L’Ami Fritz standing apart from the tables, his hands in his pockets, staring abstractedly out of a dark window on to the lake.
“Well?” cried Madame Wachner sharply, “Well, Fritz?”
“I have had no luck!” he shook his head angrily. “It is all the fault of that cursed system! If I had only begun at the right, the propitious moment—as I should have done if you had not worried me and asked me to go away—I should probably have made a great deal of money,” he looked at her disconsolately, deprecatingly.
Chester also looked at Madame Wachner. He admired the wife’s self-restraint. Her red face got a little redder. That was all.
“It cannot be helped,” she said a trifle coldly, and in French. “I knew how it would be, so I am not disappointed. Have you anything left? Have you got the five louis I gave you at the beginning of the evening?”
Monsieur Wachner shook his head gloomily.
“Well then, it is about time we went home.” She turned and led the way out.
XXIII
As Sylvia went slowly and wearily up to her room a sudden horror of Lacville swept over her excited brain.
For the first time since she had been in the Villa du Lac, she locked the door of her bedroom and sat down in the darkness.
She was overwhelmed with feelings of humiliation and pain. She told herself with bitter self-scorn that Paul de Virieu cared nothing for her. If he had cared ever so little he surely would never have done what he had done tonight?
But such thoughts were futile, and soon she rose and turned on the electric light. Then she sat down at a little writing-table which had been thoughtfully provided for her by M. Polperro, and hurriedly, with feverish eagerness, wrote a note.
Dear Count de Virieu—
I am very tired tonight, and I do not feel as if I should be well enough to ride tomorrow.—Yours sincerely,
That was all, but it was enough. Hitherto she had evidently been—hateful thought—what the matrons of Market Dalling called “coming on” in her manner to Count Paul; henceforth she would be cold and distant to him.
She put her note into an envelope, addressed it, and went downstairs again. It was very late, but M. Polperro was still up. The landlord never went to bed till each one of his clients was safe indoors.
“Will you kindly see that the Comte de Virieu gets this tonight?” she said briefly. And then, as the little man looked at her with some surprise, “It is to tell the Count that I cannot ride tomorrow morning. It is late, and I am very tired; sleepy, too, after the long motoring expedition I took this afternoon!” She tried to smile.
M. Polperro bowed.
“Certainly, Madame. The Count shall have this note the moment he returns from the Casino. He will not be long now.”
But the promises of Southerners are pie-crust. Doubtless M. Polperro meant the Count to have the note that night, but he put it
