ia shook her head. "Oh, no! But Madame Wolsky is there to-day, and I
should have gone with her if I had been ready when she came down. It has
turned so hot that I feel a few hours in the country would be pleasant,
and I am quite likely to meet her, for I suppose Lacville is not a very
large place, M. Girard?"

The hotel-keeper hesitated; he found it really difficult to give a true
answer to this simple question.

"Lacville?" he repeated; "well--Dame! Lacville is Lacville! It is not
like anything Madame has ever seen. On that I would lay my life. First,
there is a most beautiful lake--that is, perhaps, the principal
attraction;--then the villas of Lacville--ah! they are ravishingly
lovely, and then there is also"--he fixed his black eyes on her--"a
Casino."

"A Casino?" echoed Sylvia. She scarcely knew what a Casino was.

"But to see the Casino properly Madame must go at night, and it would be
well if Madame were accompanied by a gentleman. I do not think Madame
should go by herself, but if Madame really desires to see Lacville
properly my wife and I will make a great pleasure to ourselves to
accompany her there one Sunday night. It is very gay, is Lacville on
Sunday night--or, perhaps," added M. Girard quickly, "Madame, being
English, would prefer a Saturday night? Lacville is also very gay on
Saturday nights."

"But is there anything going on there at night?" asked Sylvia,
astonished. "I thought Lacville was a country place."

"There are a hundred and twenty trains daily from the Gare du Nord to
Lacville," said the hotel-keeper drily. "A great many Parisians spend the
evening there each day. They do not start till nine o'clock in the
evening, and they are back, having spent a very pleasant, or sometimes
an unpleasant, soiree, before midnight."

"A hundred and twenty trains!" repeated Sylvia, amazed. "But why do so
many people want to go to Lacville?"

Again the hotel-keeper stared at her with a questioning look. Was it
possible that pretty Madame Bailey did not know what was the real
attraction of Lacville? Yet it was not his business to run the place
down--as a matter of fact, he and his wife had invested nearly a thousand
pounds of their hard-earned savings in their relation's hotel, the Villa
du Lac. If Madame Bailey really wanted to leave salubrious, beautiful
Paris for the summer, why should she not go to Lacville instead of to
dull, puritanical, stupid Switzerland?

These thoughts rushed through the ac