ing violent love to her, that
he might perhaps try to kiss her! Were not all Frenchmen of his type
rather gay dogs?

But nothing--nothing of the sort had ever been within measurable distance
of happening. On the contrary, he always treated her with scrupulous
respect, and he never--and this sometimes piqued Sylvia--made love to
her, or attempted to flirt with her. Instead, he talked to her in that
intimate, that confiding fashion which a woman finds so attractive in a
man when she has reason to believe his confidences are made to her alone.

When Bill Chester asked her not to do something she desired to do, Sylvia
felt annoyed and impatient, but when Count Paul, as she had fallen into
the way of calling him, made no secret of his wish that she should give
up play, Sylvia felt touched and pleased that he should care.

Early in their acquaintance the Count had warned her against making
casual friendships in the Gambling Rooms, and he even did not like her
knowing--this amused Sylvia--the harmless Wachners.

When he saw her talking to Madame Wachner in the Club, Count Paul would
look across the baccarat table and there would come a little frown over
his eyes--a frown she alone could see.

And as the days went on, and as their intimacy seemed to grow closer and
ever closer, there came across Sylvia a deep wordless wish--and she had
never longed for anything so much in her life--to rescue her friend from
what he admitted to be his terrible vice of gambling. In this she showed
rather a feminine lack of logic, for, while wishing to wean him from his
vice, she did not herself give up going to the Casino.

She would have been angry indeed had the truth been whispered to her, the
truth that it was not so much her little daily gamble--as Madame Wachner
called it--that made Sylvia so faithful an attendant at the Club; it was
because when there she was still with Paul de Virieu, she could see and
sympathise with him when he was winning, and grieve when he was losing,
as alas! he often lost.

When they were not at the Casino the Comte de Virieu very seldom alluded
to his play, or to the good or ill fortune which might have befallen him
that day. When with her he tried, so much was clear to Sylvia, to forget
his passion for gambling.

But this curious friendship of hers with Count Paul only occupied, in a
material sense, a small part of Sylvia's daily life at Lacville; and the
people with whom she spent most of her time were s