Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/206

196 she saw Count Paul's straight, slim figure turn in from the road through the gates of the Villa.

He glanced up at her window and took off his hat. He looked cool, unruffled, and self-possessed, but her eager eyes saw a change in his face. He looked very grave, and yet oddly happy. Was it possible that he had news at last of Anna Wolsky?

He mounted the stone-steps and disappeared into the house; and Sylvia, getting up, began moving restlessly about her room. She longed to go downstairs, and yet a feminine feeling of delicacy restrained her from doing so.

A great stillness brooded over everything. The heat had sent everyone indoors. M. Polperro, perhaps because of his Southern up-bringing, always took an early afternoon siesta. It looked as if his servants followed his example. The Villa du Lac seemed asleep.

Sylvia went across to the other window, the window overlooking the large, shady garden, and there, glancing down, she saw Count Paul.

"Come into the garden—," he said softly in English; and Sylvia, leaning over the bar of her window, thought he added the word "Maud"—but of course that could not have been so, for her name, as the Count knew well, was Sylvia! And equally of course he always addressed her as "Madame."

"It's so nice and cool up here," she whispered back. "I don't believe it is half so cool in the garden!"

She gazed down into his upturned face with innocent coquetry, pretending—only pretending—to hesitate as to what she would do in answer to his invitation.