doubt Madame has heard of his brother-in-law, the Duc d'Eglemont?"

Sylvia smiled. "Yes, he won the Derby, a famous English race," she said;
and then, simply because the landlord's love of talking was infectious,
"And does the Count own horses, too?" she asked.

"Oh, no, Madame. He loves them, yes, and he is a fine horseman, but Count
Paul, alas! has other things that interest and occupy him more than
horses!"

After M. Polperro had bowed himself out, Sylvia sat down close to one of
the open windows and looked out over the enchanting, and to her English
eyes, unusual panorama spread out before her.

Yes, she had done well to come here, to a place of which, no doubt, many
of her English friends would have thoroughly disapproved! But, after all,
what was wrong about Lacville? Where, for the matter of that, was the
harm of playing for money if one could afford to lose it?

Sylvia had hardly ever met so kind or so intelligent a woman as was
her new friend, Anna Wolsky: and Anna--she made no secret of it at
all--allowed playing for money to be her one absorbing interest in life.

As she thought of the Polish woman Sylvia felt sorry that she and her
friend were in different _pensions_. It would have been so nice to have
had her here, in the Villa du Lac. She felt rather lost without Anna, for
she had become accustomed to the other's pleasant, stimulating
companionship.

M. Polperro had said that dinner was at half-past seven. Sylvia got up
from her chair by the window. She moved back into the room and put on a
pretty white lace evening dress which she had not worn since she had been
in France.

It would have been absurd to have appeared in such a gown in the little
dining-room of the Hotel de l'Horloge, which opened into the street; but
the Villa du Lac was quite different.

As she saw herself reflected in one of the long mirrors let into the
wall, Sylvia blushed and half-smiled. She had suddenly remembered the
young man who had behaved, on that first visit of hers to the Villa du
Lac, so much more discreetly than had all the other Frenchmen with whom
she had been brought in temporary contact. She was familiar, through
newspaper paragraphs, with the name of his brother-in-law, the French
duke who had won the Derby. The Duc d'Eglemont, that was the racing
French duke who had carried off the blue riband of the British Turf--the
other name was harder to remember--then it came to her. Count Paul de
Virieu. How kind and