om he had formed such a bad impression.

He took his watch out of his pocket. "There's a train for Lacville at
a quarter to ten," he said slowly. "That would be an excellent train
for--for _us_--to take--"

"Then are you thinking of going back to Lacville too?" There was that
sarcastic inflection in the Englishman's voice which the Count had
learned to look for and to resent.

"Yes."

Count Paul looked at Bill Chester significantly, and his look said, "Take
care, my friend! We do not allow a man to sneer at another man in this
country unless he is willing to stand certain unpleasant consequences.
Our duels are not always _pour rire_!"

During the short train journey back to Lacville they hardly spoke. Each
thought that the other was doing a strange and unreasonable thing--a
thing which the thinker could have done much better if left to himself.

At Lacville station they jumped into a victoria.

"I suppose we had better drive straight to the Villa du Lac," said
Chester, hesitatingly.

"Yes, we had better go first to the Villa du Lac, for Mrs. Bailey should
be home by now. By the way, Mr. Chester, you had better ask to have my
room to-night; we know that it is disengaged. As for me, I will go on
somewhere else as soon as I know you have seen our friend. Please do not
tell Mrs. Bailey that I came with you. Where would be the use? I may go
back to Paris to-night." Paul de Virieu spoke in a constrained,
preoccupied voice.

"But aren't you coming in? Won't you stay at Lacville at least till
to-morrow?"

Chester's voice unwittingly became far more cordial; if the Frenchman did
not wish to see Sylvia, why had he insisted on coming back, too, to
Lacville.

The hall of the Villa du Lac was brightly lit up, and as the victoria
swept up the short drive to the stone horseshoe stairway, the Comte de
Virieu suddenly grasped the other's hand.

"Good luck!" he exclaimed, "Good luck, fortunate man! As the Abbot at my
English school used to say to me when he met me, as a little boy, running
about the cloisters, 'God bless you!'"

Chester was rather touched, as well as surprised. But what queer,
emotional fellows Frenchmen are to be sure! Although Count Paul, as
Sylvia used to call him, had evidently been a little bit in love with her
himself, he was quite willing to think of her as married to another man!

But--but there was the rub! Chester was no longer so sure that he wanted
to marry Sylvia. She had become a different