Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/164

154 high, narrow windows which now encompassed her were all closed, but with the clatter of the horses' hoofs on the huge paving-stones the great house stirred into life.

The carriage drew up. Count Paul jumped out and gave Sylvia his hand. Huge iron doors, that looked as if they could shut out an invading army, were flung open, and after a moment's pause, Paul de Virieu led Sylvia Bailey across the threshold of the historic Hôtel d'Eglemont.

She had never seen, she had never imagined, such pomp, such solemn state, as that which greeted her, and there came across her a childish wish that Anna Wolsky and the Wachners could witness the scene—the hall hung with tapestries given to an ancestor of the Duc d'Eglemont by Louis the Fourteenth, the line of powdered footmen, and the solemn major-domo who ushered them up the wide staircase, at the head of which there stood a slender, white-clad young woman, with a sweet, eager face.

This was the first time Sylvia Bailey had met a duchess, and she was perhaps a little surprised to see how very unpretentious a duchess could be!

Marie-Anne d'Eglemont spoke in a low, almost timid voice, her English being far less good than her brother's, and yet how truly kind and highly-bred she at once showed herself, putting Sylvia at her ease, and appearing to think there was nothing at all unusual in Mrs. Bailey's friendship with Paul de Virieu!

And then, after they had lunched in an octagon room of which each panel had been painted by Van Loo, and which opened on a garden where the green glades and high