Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/259

Rh his English eyes looked so little forest-like, and yet which made walking there very pleasant.

Suddenly there fell on his ear the sound of horses trotting quickly. He looked round, and some hundred yards or so to his right, at a place where four roads met under high arching trees, he saw two riders, a man and a woman, pass by. They had checked their horses to a walk, and as their voices floated over to him, the woman's voice seemed extraordinarily, almost absurdly, familiar—in fact, he could have sworn it was Sylvia Bailey's voice.

Chester stopped in his walk and shrugged his shoulders impatiently. She must indeed be dwelling in his thoughts if he thus involuntarily evoked her presence where she could by no stretch of possibility be.

But that wandering echo brought Sylvia Bailey very near to Chester, and once more he recalled her as he had seen her sitting at the gambling table the night before.

In grotesque juxtaposition he remembered, together with that picture of Sylvia as he had seen her last night, the case of a respectable old lady, named Mrs. Meeks, the widow of a clergyman who had had a living in the vicinity of Market Dalling.

Not long after her husband's death this old lady—she had about three hundred a year, and Chester had charge of her money matters—went abroad for a few weeks to Mentone. Those few weeks had turned Mrs. Meeks into a confirmed gambler. She now lived entirely at Monte Carlo in one small room.

He could not help remembering now the kind of remarks that were made by the more prosperous inhabitants