together, but Madame Wolsky--and Sylvia Bailey felt uneasy and
growing concern that it was so--now lived for play, and play alone.

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 mak