would ask you where to look for her, and they
would torment you incessantly. If I were you I would say as little as
possible."

Madame Wachner spoke very quickly, almost breathlessly, and Sylvia felt
vaguely uncomfortable. There was, of course, only one person to whom she
was likely to mention the fact, and that was Paul de Virieu.

Was it possible that Madame Wachner wished to warn her against telling
him of a fact which he was sure to discover for himself in the course of
a day or two?

CHAPTER XV

As Sylvia drove away alone from the station, she felt exceedingly
troubled and unhappy.

It was all very well for Madame Wachner to take the matter of Anna
Wolsky's disappearance from Lacville so philosophically. The Wachners'
acquaintance with Madame Wolsky had been really very slight, and they
naturally knew nothing of the Polish woman's inner nature and
temperament.

Sylvia told herself that Anna must have been in great trouble, and that
something very serious must have happened to her, before she could have
gone away like this, without saying anything about it.

If poor Anna had changed her mind, and gone to the Casino the day before,
she might, of course, have lost all her winnings and more. Sylvia
reminded herself that it stood to reason that if one could make hundreds
of pounds in an hour or two, then one might equally lose hundreds of
pounds in the same time. But somehow she could hardly believe that her
friend had been so foolish.

Still, how else to account for Anna's disappearance, her sudden exit
from Lacville? Anna Wolsky was a proud woman, and Sylvia suspected that
if she had come unexpectedly to the end of her resources, she would have
preferred to go away rather than confide her trouble to a new friend.

Tears slowly filled Sylvia Bailey's blue eyes. She felt deeply hurt by
Anna's strange conduct.

Madame Wachner's warning as to saying as little as possible of the
other's departure from Lacville had made very little impression on
Sylvia, yet it so far affected her that, instead of telling Monsieur
Polperro of the fact the moment she was back at the Villa du Lac, she
went straight up to her own room. But when there she found that she could
settle down to nothing--neither to a book nor to letters.

Since her husband's death Sylvia Bailey's social circle had become much
larger, and there were a number of people who enjoyed inviting and
meeting the pretty, wealthy young widow. But just now