am her trustee, but I have no power of making
her do what I think sensible, or even what I think right. She is
absolutely her own mistress."

He stopped abruptly, for he had no wish to discuss Sylvia and Sylvia's
affairs with this foreigner, however oddly intimate Mrs. Bailey had
allowed herself to get with the Comte de Virieu.

"Lacville is such a very queer place," observed the Count, meditatively.
"It is perhaps even queerer than you know or guess it to be, Mr.
Chester."

The English lawyer thought the remark too obvious to answer. Of course
Lacville was a queer place--to put it plainly, little better than a
gambling hell. He knew that well enough! But it was rather strange to
hear the Comte de Virieu saying so--a real case, if ever there was one,
of Satan rebuking sin.

So at last he answered, irritably, "Of course it is! I can't think what
made Mrs. Bailey go there in the first instance." His mind was full of
Sylvia. He seemed to go on speaking of her against his will.

"Her going to Lacville was a mere accident," explained Paul de Virieu,
quickly. "She was brought there by the Polish lady, Madame Wolsky, of
whom you must have heard her speak, whom she met in an hotel in Paris,
and who disappeared so mysteriously. It is not a place for a young lady
to be at by herself."

Bill Chester tilted back the chair on which he was sitting. Once more he
asked himself what on earth the fellow was driving at? Were these remarks
a preliminary to the Count's saying that he was not going to Switzerland
after all--that he was going back to Lacville in order to take care of
Sylvia.

Quite suddenly the young Englishman felt shaken by a very primitive and,
till these last few days, a very unfamiliar feeling--that of jealousy.

Damn it--he wouldn't have that. Of course he was no longer in love with
Sylvia Bailey, but he was her trustee and lifelong friend. It was his
duty to prevent her making a fool of herself, either by gambling away
her money--the good money the late George Bailey had toiled so hard to
acquire--or, what would be ever so much worse, by making some wretched
marriage to a foreign adventurer.

He stared suspiciously at his companion. Was it likely that a real
count--the French equivalent to an English earl--would lead the sort of
life this man, Paul de Virieu, was leading, and in a place like Lacville?

"If you really feel like that, I think I'd better give up my trip to
Switzerland, and go back to Lacville