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You know, Madame Wachner" she lowered her voice, for she did not wish the driver to hear what she was about to say "you know that Anna won a very large sum of money two nights ago." Sylvia Bailey was aware that people had been robbed and roughly handled, even in idyllic Lacville, when leaving the Casino after an especial stroke of luck at the tables. "I do hope nothing has happened to her!"
"You say that Mrs. Bailey is at the Casino?" "Mais oui, M'sieur!" It had never occurred to Chester that there would be a Casino in the place where Sylvia was spending the summer. But then everything at Lacville, including the Villa du Lac, was utterly unlike what the English lawyer had expected it to be. M. Polperro spread out his hands with an eloquent gesture.
M. Girard was a very busy man, yet he always found time for a talk with any foreign client of his hotel. "I want to know," said Sylvia, smiling in spite of herself, for the hotel-keeper was such a merry-looking little man, and so utterly different from any English hotel-keeper she had ever seen! "I want to know, M. Girard, which is the best way to a place called Lacville?
Looking out over the lake, which, as it was an exceedingly hot, fine day, was already crowded with boats, Sylvia almost made up her mind to go back into Paris for two or three days. Bill would think it a very strange thing that she was staying here in Lacville all by herself.
They went out again into the garden, and the wide lawn, with its shaded spaces of deep green, was a delicious place in which to spend a quiet, idle hour. They sat down and drank their coffee under one of the cedars of Lebanon. "This is a very delightful, curious kind of hotel," he said at last. "And I confess that now I understand why you like Lacville.
Some instinct told her that while Chester was at Lacville Sylvia would not go to the Casino as often as she had been in the habit of doing. There was a pause and then again Madame Wachner asked the Englishman a question: "Perhaps you will go on to Switzerland, leaving Mrs. Bailey here, and then come back for her?" "Perhaps I shall," he said heavily, without really thinking of what he was saying.
"Still it is a pretty place, Lacville, and cheaper than one would think." She leant across the table, and continued in a confidential undertone: "As for us my husband and I we have taken a small villa; he has grown so tired of hotels." "But surely you had a villa at Aix?" said Anna, in a surprised tone. "Yes, we had a villa there, certainly. But then a very sad affair happened to us " she sighed.
That room in the Casino where I first saw you will be crammed to suffocation within an hour, and even the Club will be well filled, though I fancy the regular habitués of the club are rather apt to avoid Saturday and Sunday at Lacville. I myself, when living here, shall try to do something else on those two days.
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.
How very, very pretty she had looked last evening more than pretty lovelier than he had ever seen her. There seemed to be new depths in her blue eyes. But Chester was shrewd enough to know that Sylvia had felt ashamed to be caught by him gambling gambling, too, in such very mixed company. Well, she would soon be leaving Lacville! What a pity those friends of hers had given up their Swiss holiday!
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