Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/84

 On waking the next morning, Sylvia Bailey forgot completely for a moment where she was.

She looked round the large, airy room, which was so absolutely unlike the small bed-room she had occupied in the Hôtel de l'Horloge, with a sense of bewilderment and surprise.

And then suddenly she remembered! Why of course she was at Lacville; and this delightful, luxurious room had been furnished and arranged for the lady-in-waiting and friend of the Empress Eugénie. The fact gave an added touch of romance to the Hôtel du Lac.

A ray of bright sunlight streamed in through the curtains she had pinned together the night before. And her travelling clock told her that it was not yet six. But Sylvia jumped out of bed, and, drawing back the curtains, she looked out, and across the lake.

The now solitary expanse of water seemed to possess a new beauty in the early morning sunlight, and the white Casino, of which the minarets were reflected in its blue depths, might have been a dream palace. Nothing broke the intense stillness but the loud, sweet twittering of the birds in the trees which surrounded the lake.

But soon the spell was broken. When the six strokes of the hour chimed out from the old parish church which forms the centre of the town of Lacville, as if by enchantment there rose sounds of stir both indoors and out. 74