Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/72

62 down close to one of the open windows and looked out over the enchanting, and to her English eyes, unusual panorama spread out before her.

Yes, she had done well to come here, to a place of which, no doubt, many of her English friends would have thoroughly disapproved! But, after all, what was wrong about Lacville? Where, for the matter of that, was the harm of playing for money if one could afford to lose it?

Sylvia had hardly ever met so kind or so intelligent a woman as was her new friend, Anna Wolsky: and Anna—she made no secret of it at all—allowed playing for money to be her one absorbing interest in life.

As she thought of the Polish woman Sylvia felt sorry that she and her friend were in different pensions. It would have been so nice to have had her here, in the Villa du Lac. She felt rather lost without Anna, for she had become accustomed to the other's pleasant, stimulating companionship.

M. Polperro had said that dinner was at half-past seven. Sylvia got up from her chair by the window. She moved back into the room and put on a pretty white lace evening dress which she had not worn since she had been in France.

It would have been absurd to have appeared in such a gown in the little dining-room of the Hôtel de l'Horloge, which opened into the street; but the Villa du Lac was quite different.

As she saw herself reflected in one of the long mirrors let into the wall, Sylvia blushed and half-smiled. She had suddenly remembered the young man who had behaved, on that first visit of hers to the Villa du Lac, so