Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/70

60 in that sort of place—I mean," she added, "in your hotel, not in the town. We could always spend the mornings together"

"And I, too, could join the Club at the Casino," interjected Sylvia, smiling.

"No, no, I don't want you to do that!" exclaimed Anna hastily.

And then Sylvia, for some unaccountable reason, felt rather irritated. It was absurd of Anna to speak to her like that! Bill Chester, her trustee, and sometime lover, always treated her as if she was a child, and a rather naughty child, too; she would not allow Anna Wolsky to do so.

"I don't see why not!" she cried. "You yourself say that there is no harm in gambling if one can afford it."

This was how Sylvia Bailey came to find herself an inmate of the Villa du Lac at Lacville; and when once the owner of the Hôtel de l'Horloge had understood that in any case she meant to leave Paris, he had done all in his power to make her going to his relation, mine host of the Villa du Lac, easy and agreeable.

Sylvia learnt with surprise that she would have to pay very little more at the Villa du Lac than she had done at the Hôtel de l'Horloge; on the other hand, she could not there have the use of a sitting-room, for the good reason that there were no private sitting-rooms in the villa. But that, so she told herself, would be no hardship, and she could spend almost the whole of the day in the charming garden.

The two friends arrived at Lacville late in the after-