Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/111

Rh woods," said Sylvia regretfully, remembering what the Comte de Virieu had said only that morning.

The other shrugged her shoulders, "I do not care for scenery—no, not at all!" she exclaimed complacently.

The carriage drew up with a jerk before a small white gate set in low, rough, wood palings. Behind the palings lay a large, straggling, and untidy garden, relieved from absolute ugliness by some high forest trees which had been allowed to remain when the house in the centre of the plot of ground was built.

Madame Wachner stepped heavily out of the carriage, and Sylvia followed her, feeling amused and interested. She wondered very much what the inside of the funny little villa she saw before her would be like. In any case, the outside of the Châlet des Muguets was almost ludicrously unlike the English houses to which she was accustomed.

Very strange, quaint, and fantastic looked the one-storey building, standing far higher than any bungalow Sylvia had ever seen, in a lawn of high, rank grass.

The walls of the Châlet des Muguets were painted bright pink, picked out with sham brown beams, which in their turn were broken at intervals by large blue china lozenges, on which were painted the giant branches of lilies-of-the-valley which gave the villa its inappropriate name!

The chocolate-coloured row of shutters were now closed to shut out the heat, for the sun beat down pitilessly on the little house, and the whole place had a curiously deserted, unlived-in appearance.

Sylvia secretly wondered how the Wachners could bear to leave the garden, which might have been made