Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/213

Rh the pension, wrote the letter, and then went out and left for Paris without saying anything about it to anyone!"

"I suppose something of that sort did happen," observed the Comte de Virieu thoughtfully.

"And now," he said, getting up from his chair, "I think I will take a turn at the Casino after all!"

Sylvia's lip quivered, but she was too proud to appeal to him to stay. Still, she felt horribly hurt.

"You see what I am like," he said, in a low, shamed voice. "I wish you had made me give you my word of honour."

She got up. It was cruel, very cruel, of him to say that to her. How amazingly their relation to one another had altered in the last half-hour!

For the moment they were enemies, and it was the enemy in Sylvia that next spoke. "I think I shall go and have tea with the Wachners. They never go to the Casino on Saturday afternoons."

A heavy cloud came over Count Paul's face.

"I can't think what you see to like in that vulgar old couple," he exclaimed irritably. "To me there is something"—he hesitated, seeking for an English word which should exactly express the French word "louche"—"sinister—that is the word I am looking for—there is to me something sinister about the Wachners."

"Sinister?" echoed Sylvia, really surprised. "Why, they seem to me to be the most good-natured, commonplace people in the world, and then they're so fond of one another!"

"I grant you that," he said. "I quite agree that that