Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/208

198 "What is the matter?" she asked anxiously. "Has anything happened to your sister?"

"Thank God—no!" he answered hastily. "But something else, something which was to be expected, but which I did not expect, has happened"

And then, very gravely, and at last releasing her hands, he added, "My kind godmother, the little Marquise you met last week, died last night."

Sylvia felt the sudden sense of surprise, almost of discomfiture, the young always feel in the neighbourhood of death.

"How dreadful! She seemed quite well when we saw her that day"

She could still hear echoing in her ears the old lady's half-mocking but kindly compliments.

"Ah! but she was very, very old—over ninety! Why, she was supposed to be aged when she became my godmother thirty odd years ago!"

He waited a moment, and then added, quietly, "She has left me in her will two hundred thousand francs."

"Oh, I am glad!"

Sylvia stretched out both hands impulsively, and the Comte de Virieu took first one and then the other and raised them to his lips.

"Eight thousand pounds? Does it seem a fortune to you, Madame?"

"Of course it does!" exclaimed Sylvia.

"It frees me from the necessity of being a pensioner on my brother-in-law," he said slowly, and Sylvia felt a little chill of disappointment. Was that his only pleasure in his legacy?