Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/161

Rh Sylvia's lovely face all his good resolutions flew to the winds.

She stepped down from the high railway carriage, and looked round her with a rather bewildered air, for a crowd of people were surging round her, and she had not yet caught sight of Count Paul.

Wearing a pinkish mauve cotton gown and a large black tulle hat, Sylvia looked enchantingly pretty. And if the Count's critical French eyes objected to the alliance of a cotton gown and tulle hat, and to the wearing of a string of large pearls in the morning, he was in the state of mind when a man of fastidious taste forgives even a lack of taste in the woman to whom he is acting as guide, philosopher, and friend.

He told himself that Sylvia Bailey could not be left alone in a place like Lacville, and that it was his positive duty to stay on there and look after her. …

Suddenly their eyes met. Sylvia blushed—Heavens! how adorable she looked when there came that vivid rose-red blush over her rounded cheeks. And she was adorable in a simple, unsophisticated way, which appealed to Paul de Virieu as nothing in woman had ever appealed to him before.

He could not help enjoying the thought of how surprised his sister would be. Marie-Anne had doubtless pictured Mrs. Bailey as belonging to the rather hard, self-assertive type of young Englishwoman of whom Paris sees a great deal. But Sylvia looked girlishly simple, timid, and confiding.

As he greeted her, Paul de Virieu's manner was serious, almost solemn. But none the less, while they walked