Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/90

80 The farther end of the walled garden was bounded by a stone orangery, a building dating from the eighteenth century, and full of the stately grace of a vanished epoch.

"What a delightful place!" Sylvia exclaimed. "But this garden must cost M. Polperro a great deal of money to keep up"

The Comte de Virieu laughed.

"Far from it! Our clever host hires out his potager to a firm of market gardeners, part of the bargain being that they allow him to have as much fruit and vegetables as he requires throughout the year. Why, the potager of the Villa du Lac supplies the whole of Lacville with fruit and flowers! When I was a child I thought this part of the garden paradise, and I spent here my happiest hours."

"It must be very odd for you to come back and stay in the Villa now that it is an hotel."

"At first it seemed very strange," he answered gravely. "But now I have become quite used to the feeling."

They walked on for awhile along one of the narrow flower-bordered paths.

"Would you care to go into the orangery?" he said. "There is not much to see there now, for all the orange-trees are out of doors. Still, it is a quaint, pretty old building."

The orangery of the Villa du Lac was an example of that at once artificial and graceful eighteenth-century architecture which, perhaps because of its mingled formality and delicacy, made so distinguished and attractive a setting to feminine beauty. It remained, the only sur-