ly very nice of Bill to do this, and a month ago Sylvia would
have looked forward to seeing him. But now everything was changed, and
Sylvia could well have dispensed with Bill Chester's presence.

The thought of Chester at Lacville filled her with unease. When she had
left her English home two months ago--it seemed more like two years than
two months--she had felt well disposed to the young lawyer, and deep in
her inmost heart she had almost brought herself to acknowledge that she
might very probably in time become his wife.

She suspected that Chester had been fond of her when she was a girl, at
a time when his means would not have justified him in proposing to her,
for he was one of those unusual men who think it dishonourable to ask
girls to marry them unless they are in a position to keep a wife. She
remembered how he had looked--how set and stern his face had become when
someone had suddenly told him in her presence of her engagement to George
Bailey, the middle-aged man who had been so kind to her, and yet who had
counted for so little in her life, though she had given him all she could
of love and duty.

Since her widowhood, so she now reminded herself remorsefully, Chester
had been extraordinarily good to her, and his devotion had touched her
because it was expressed in actions rather than in words, for he was also
the unusual type of man, seldom a romantic type, who scorns, however much
in love, to take advantage of a fiduciary position to strengthen his own.

The fact that he was her trustee brought them into frequent conflict. Too
often Bill was the candid friend instead of the devoted lover. Their only
real quarrel--if quarrel it could be called--had been, as we know, over
the purchase of her string of pearls. But time, or so Sylvia confidently
believed, had proved her to have been right, for her "investment," as she
always called it to Bill Chester, had improved in value.

But though she had been right in that comparatively trifling matter, she
knew that Chester would certainly disapprove of the kind of life--the
idle, purposeless, frivolous life--she was now leading.

Looking out over the lake, which, as it was an exceedingly hot, fine day,
was already crowded with boats, Sylvia almost made up her mind to go back
into Paris for two or three days.

Bill would think it a very strange thing that she was staying here in
Lacville all by herself. But the thought of leaving Lacville just now
was very disagr