Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/295

Rh How amazed Chester would have been had he been able to see straight into Paul de Virieu's heart! Had he divined the other's almost unendurable temptation to take Sylvia Bailey at her word, to impose on her pathetic ignorance of life, to allow her to become a gambler's wife.

Had the woman he loved been penniless, the Comte de Virieu would probably have yielded to the temptation which now came in the subtle garb of jealousy—keen, poisoned-fanged jealousy of this fine looking young Englishman who stood before them both.

Would Sylvia ever cling to this man as she had clung to him—would she ever allow Chester to kiss her as she had allowed Paul to kiss her, and that after he had released the hand she had laid in his?

But alas! there are kisses and kisses—clingings and clingings. Chester, so the Frenchman with his wide disillusioned knowledge of life felt only too sure, would win Sylvia in time.

"Shall we go in and find out the time of the Swiss express?" he asked the other man, "or perhaps you have already decided on a train?"

"No, I haven't looked one out yet."

They strolled off together towards the house, and Sylvia walked blindly on to the grass and sat down on one of the rocking-chairs of which M. Polperro was so proud.

She looked after the two men with a sense of oppressed bewilderment. Then they were both going away—both going to leave her?

After to-day—how strange, how utterly unnatural the