Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/162

152 side by side in a quiet, leisurely fashion through the great grey station, Sylvia felt as if she had indeed passed through the shining portals of fairyland.

In the covered courtyard stood the Duchesse's carriage. Count Paul motioned the footman aside and stood bareheaded while Sylvia took her place in the victoria. As he sat down by her side he suddenly observed, "My brother-in-law does not like motor-cars," and Sylvia felt secret, shame-faced gratitude to the Duc d'Eglemont, for, thanks to this prejudice of his, the moments now being spent by her alone with Count Paul were trebled.

As the carriage drove with swift, gondola-like motion through the hot streets, Sylvia felt more than ever as if she were in a new, enchanted country—that dear country called Romance, and, as if to prolong the illusion, the Count began to talk what seemed to her the language of that country.

"Every Frenchman," he exclaimed, abruptly, "is in love with love, and when you hear—as you may do sometimes, Madame—that a Frenchman is rarely in love with his own wife, pray answer that this is quite untrue! For it often happens that in his wife a Frenchman discovers the love he has sought elsewhere in vain."

He looked straight before him as he added: "As for marriage—well, marriage is in my country regarded as a very serious matter indeed! No Frenchman goes into marriage as light-heartedly as does the average Englishman, and as have done, for instance, so many of my own English schoolfellows. No, to a Frenchman his marriage means everything or nothing, and if he loved a woman