o you that
the Wachners know more of your Polish friend's departure than they admit?
I gathered that impression the only time I talked to your Madame Wachner
about the matter. I felt sure she knew more than she would say! Of
course, it was only an impression."

Sylvia hesitated.

"At first Madame Wachner seemed annoyed that I made a fuss about it," she
said thoughtfully. "But later she seemed as surprised and sorry as I am
myself. Oh, no, Count, I am sure you are wrong--why you forget that
Madame Wachner walked up to the Pension Malfait that same evening--I mean
the evening of the day Anna left Lacville. In fact, it was Madame Wachner
who first found out that Anna had not come home. She went up to her
bed-room to look for her."

"Then it was Madame Wachner who found the letter?" observed the Count
interrogatively.

"Oh, no, it was not Madame Wachner who found it. Anna's letter was
discovered the next morning by the chambermaid in a blotting-book on the
writing table. No one had thought of looking there. You see they were all
expecting her back that night. Madame Malfait still thinks that poor Anna
went to the Casino in the afternoon, and after having lost her money came
back to the pension, wrote the letter, and then went out and left for
Paris without saying anything about it to anyone!"

"I suppose something of that sort did happen," observed the Comte de
Virieu thoughtfully.

"And now," he said, getting up from his chair, "I think I will take a
turn at the Casino after all!"

Sylvia's lip quivered, but she was too proud to appeal to him to stay.
Still, she felt horribly hurt.

"You see what I am like," he said, in a low, shamed voice. "I wish you
had made me give you my word of honour."

She got up. It was cruel, very cruel, of him to say that to her. How
amazingly their relation to one another had altered in the last
half-hour!

For the moment they were enemies, and it was the enemy in Sylvia that
next spoke. "I think I shall go and have tea with the Wachners. They
never go to the Casino on Saturday afternoons."

A heavy cloud came over Count Paul's face.

"I can't think what you see to like in that vulgar old couple," he
exclaimed irritably. "To me there is something"--he hesitated, seeking
for an English word which should exactly express the French word
"_louche_"--"sinister--that is the word I am looking for--there is
to me something sinister about the Wachners."

"Sinister?" echoed Sylvia, real