Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/131

Rh, and scarcely aware of what went on round her. She and Monsieur Wachner—"L'Ami Fritz," as even Sylvia had fallen into the way of calling him—seemed scarcely alive unless they were standing or sitting round a baccarat table, putting down or taking up the shining gold pieces which they treated as carelessly as if they were counters.

But it was not the easy, idle, purposeless life she was now leading that brought the pretty English widow that strange, unacknowledged feeling of entire content with life.

What made existence at Lacville so exciting and so exceptionally interesting to Sylvia Bailey was her friendship with Comte Paul de Virieu.

There is in every woman a passion for romance, and in Sylvia this passion had been baulked, not satisfied, by her first marriage.

Bill Chester loved her well and deeply, but he was her lawyer and trustee as well as her lover. He had an honest, straightforward nature, and when with her something always prompted Chester to act the part of candid friend, and the part of candid friend fits in very ill with that of lover. To take but one example of how ill his honesty of purpose served him in the matter, Sylvia had never really forgiven him the "fuss" he had made about her string of pearls.

But with the Comte de Virieu she never quite knew what to be at, and mystery is the food of romance.

At the Villa du Lac the two were almost inseparable, and yet so intelligently and quietly did the Count arrange their frequent meetings—their long walks and talks