uite sincere!"

She bent down, and Sylvia, to her confusion and surprise, felt her cheeks
lightly kissed by the withered lips of Paul de Virieu's godmother.

"Madame Bailey's rouge is natural; it does not come off!" the old lady
exclaimed, and a smile crept over her parchment-coloured face. "Not but
what a great deal of nonsense is talked about the usage of rouge, my
dear children! There is no harm in supplementing the niggardly gifts of
nature. You, for instance, Marie-Anne, would look all the better for a
little rouge!" She spoke in a high, quavering voice.

The Duchesse smiled. Her brother had always been the old Marquise's
favourite.

"But I should feel so ashamed if it came off," she said lightly; "if, for
instance, I felt one of my cheeks growing pale while the other remained
bright red?"

"That would never happen if you used what I have often told you is
the only rouge a lady should use, that is, the sap of the geranium
blossom--that gives an absolutely natural tint to the skin, and my own
dear mother always used it. You remember how Louis XVIII. complimented
her on her beautiful complexion at the first Royal ball held after the
Restoration? Well, the Sovereign's gracious words were entirely owing to
the geranium blossom!"

CHAPTER XIV

The day after her memorable expedition to Paris opened pleasantly for
Sylvia Bailey, though it was odd how dull and lifeless the Villa du Lac
seemed to be without Count Paul.

But he would be back to-morrow, and in the morning of the next day they
were to begin riding together.

Again and again she went over in retrospect every moment of the two hours
she had spent in that great house in the Faubourg St. Germain.

How kind these two ladies had been to her, Paul's gentle sister and his
stately little fairy-like godmother! But the Duchesse's manner had been
very formal, almost solemn; and as for the other--Sylvia could still feel
the dim, yet terribly searching, eyes fixed on her face, and she wondered
nervously what sort of effect she had produced on the old Marquise.

Meanwhile, she felt that now was the time to see something of Anna
Wolsky. The long afternoon and evening stretching before her seemed
likely to be very dull, and so she wrote a little note and asked Anna if
she would care for a long expedition in the Forest of Montmorency. It was
the sort of thing Anna always said bored her, but as she was not going to
the Casino a drive would surely be better t