Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/239

Rh those standing round the gambling-table. Both the men and the women stared at her, some enviously, but more with kindly admiration, for beauty is sure of its tribute in any French audience, and Sylvia Bailey to-night looked radiantly lovely—lovely and yet surely unhappy and ill-at-ease.

Well might she look both in such a place and among such a crew! So the English lawyer angrily told himself.

Now and again she turned and spoke in an eager, intimate fashion to a man sitting next her on her left. This man, oddly enough, was not playing.

Sylvia Bailey's companion was obviously a Frenchman, or so Chester felt sure, for now he found himself concentrating his attention on Mrs. Bailey's neighbour rather than on her. This man, to whom she kept turning and speaking in a low, earnest tone, was slim and fair, and what could be seen of his evening clothes fitted scrupulously well. The Englishman, looking at him with alien, jealous eyes, decided within himself that the Frenchman with whom Sylvia seemed to be on such friendly terms, was a foppish-looking fellow, not at all the sort of man she ought to have "picked up" on her travels.

Suddenly Sylvia raised her head, throwing it back with a graceful gesture, and Chester's eyes travelled on to the person who was standing just behind her, and to whom she had now begun speaking with smiling animation.

This was a woman—short, stout, and swarthy—dressed in a bright purple gown, and wearing a pale blue bonnet which was singularly unbecoming to her red,