ece of garden which lay at the back of the house was a dense
chestnut wood, only separated from the Chalet des Muguets by a straggling
hedge.

"Does the wood belong to you, too?" she asked.

Madame Wachner shook her head.

"Oh! no," she said, "that is for sale!"

"You must find it very lonely here at night," said Sylvia, musingly, "you
do not seem to have any neighbours either to the right or left."

"There is a villa a little way down the road," said Madame Wachner
quickly. "But we are not nervous people--and then we 'ave nothing it
would be worth anybody's while to steal."

Sylvia reminded herself that the Wachners must surely have a good deal of
money in the house if they gambled as much as Anna Wolsky said they did.
Her hostess could not keep it all in the little bag which she always
carried hung on her wrist.

And then, as if Madame Wachner had seen straight into her mind, the old
woman said significantly. "As to our money, I will show you where we keep
it. Come into my bed-room; perhaps you will take off your hat there; then
we shall be what English people call 'cosy.'"

Madame Wachner led the way again into the short passage, and so into a
large bed-room, which looked, like the kitchen, on to the back garden.

After the kitchen, this bed-room struck Sylvia as being the pleasantest
room in the Chalet des Muguets, and that although, like the dining-room
and drawing-room, it was extraordinarily bare.

There was no chest of drawers, no dressing-table, no cupboard to be seen.
Madame Wachner's clothes hung on pegs behind the door, and there was a
large brass-bound trunk in a corner of the room.

But the broad, low bed looked very comfortable, and there was a bath-room
next door.

Madame Wachner showed her guest the bath-room with great pride.

"This is the 'English comfortable,'" she said, using the quaint phrase
the French have invented to express the acme of domestic luxury. "My
'usband will never allow me to take a 'ouse that has no bath-room. 'E is
very clean about 'imself"--she spoke as if it was a fact to be proud of,
and Sylvia could not help smiling.

"I suppose there are still many French houses without a bath-room," she
said.

"Yes," said Madame Wachner quickly, "the French are not a clean
people,"--she shook her head scornfully.

"I suppose you keep your money in that box?" said Sylvia, looking at the
brass-bound trunk.

"No, indeed! _This_ is where I keep it!"

Madame Wachner suddenly