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And yet and yet it is so very unlike Anna not to send me a word of explanation! And then, you know in that letter she left in her room at the Pension Malfait she positively promised to send a telegram about her luggage. Surely it is very strange that she has not done that?"
The Frenchman's surprise and discomfiture seemed quite sincere; but Chester, looking into his face, suspected that the wondering protests, the assertion that this particular bed-room was the quietest in the house, were not sincere. In this, however he wronged poor M. Malfait. Chester went upstairs and packed. There seemed to be a kind of finality in the act.
Two hours later Sylvia Bailey was having luncheon with Anna Wolsky in the Pension Malfait. The two hostelries, hers and Anna's, were in almost absurd contrast the one to the other. At the Villa du Lac everything was spacious, luxurious, and quiet.
What can possibly have made her want to leave Lacville in such a hurry? She was actually engaged to have dinner with our friends, Monsieur and Madame Wachner. Did she not send them any sort of message, Madame Malfait? I wish you would try and remember what she said when she went out." The Frenchwoman looked at her with a curious stare.
Somehow she did not like the Pension Malfait, though it was clear that it had once been a handsome private mansion standing in large grounds of its own. The garden, however, had now been cut down to a small strip, and the whole place formed a great contrast to the gay and charming Villa du Lac.
Instead, he drew her closer to him, and his lips sought and found her sweet, tremulous mouth. And Chester? Chester that morning for the first time in his well-balanced life felt not only ill but horribly depressed. He had come back to the Pension Malfait the night before feeling quite well, and as cheerful as his disapproval of Sylvia Bailey's proceedings at the Casino allowed him to be.
But Sylvia Bailey was entirely unused to being snubbed pretty young women provided with plenty of money seldom are snubbed and so she did not turn away and leave the hall, as Madame Malfait hoped she would do. "What a strange thing!" she observed, in a troubled tone. "How extraordinary it is that my friend should have gone away like this, leaving her luggage behind her!
She would have liked the support of Madame Wachner's cheerful presence when making her inquiries, for she was aware that the proprietors of Anna's pension M. and Madame Malfait had been very much annoyed that she, Sylvia, had not joined her friend there. Madame Malfait was sitting in her usual place that is, in a little glass cage in the hall and when she saw Mrs.
"Tell me all that happened," he said, sitting down and speaking in the eager, kindly way he seemed to keep for Sylvia alone. And then Sylvia told him. She described the coming of the messenger, her journey to the Pension Malfait, and she repeated, as far as was possible, the exact words of her friend's curiously-worded, abrupt letter to Madame Malfait.
A long week went by, and still no news, no explanation of her abrupt departure from Lacville, was received from Anna Wolsky; and the owners of the Pension Malfait were still waiting for instructions as to what was to be done with Madame Wolsky's luggage, and with the various little personal possessions she had left scattered about her room.
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