Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/229

Rh certainly disapprove of the way she was now spending her money. …

Something told her, and the thought was not wholly unpleasing to her, that Bill Chester and the Comte de Virieu would not get on well together. She wondered if Count Paul had ever been jealous—if he were capable of jealousy? It would be rather interesting to see if anything or anyone could make him so!

And then her mind travelled on, far, far away, to a picture with which she had been familiar from her girlhood, for it hung in the drawing-room of one of her father's friends at Market Dalling. It was called "The Gambler's Wife." She had always thought it a very pretty and pathetic picture; but she no longer thought it so; in fact, it now appeared to her to be a ridiculous travesty of life. Gamblers were just like other people, neither better nor worse—and often infinitely more lovable than were some other people. …

At last Sylvia got up, and slowly made her way out of the wood. She did not go back through the Wachners' garden; instead, she struck off to the left, on to a field path, which finally brought her to the main road.

As she was passing the Pension Malfait the landlady came out to the gate.

"Madame!" she cried out loudly, "I have had news of Madame Wolsky at last! Early this afternoon I had a telegram from her asking me to send her luggage to the cloak-room of the Gare du Nord."

Sylvia felt very glad—glad, and yet once more, perhaps unreasonably, hurt. Then Anna had been in Paris all the time? How odd, how really unkind of her not