Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/264

254 kind, dear Madame Wachner," she exclaimed. "We shall be delighted to come! I thought of taking Mr. Chester a drive through the Forest of Montmorency. Will it do if we are with you about five?"

"Yes," said Madame Wachner.

And then, to Chester's satisfaction, she turned and went away. "I cannot stay now," she said, "for l'Ami Fritz is waiting for me. 'E does not like to be kept waiting."

"What a nice woman!" said Chester heartily, "and how lucky you are, Sylvia, to have made her acquaintance in such a queer place as this. But I suppose you have got to know quite a number of people in the hotel?"

"Well, no," she stopped abruptly. She certainly had come to know the Comte de Virieu, but he was the exception, not the rule.

"You see, Bill, Lacville is the sort of place where everyone thinks everyone else rather queer! I fancy some of the ladies here—they are mostly foreigners, Russians, and Germans—think it very odd that I should be by myself in such a place."

She spoke without thinking—in fact she uttered her thoughts aloud.

"Then you admit that it is rather a queer place for you to be staying in by yourself," he said slowly.

"No, I don't!" she protested eagerly. "But don't let's talk of disagreeable things—I'm going to take you such a splendid drive!"

Chester never forgot that first day of his at Lacville. It was by far the pleasantest day he spent there, and