Mrs. Belloc Lowndes

“ Bunting, may I trouble you to come over here for a moment?" The words were hissed rather than spoken by Mr. Sleuth's lips.
His landlady took a doubtful step forward.
"A last word with you, Mrs. Bunting." The lodger's face was still distorted with fear and passion. "Do not think to escape the consequences of your hideous treachery. I trusted you, Mrs. Bunting, and you betrayed me! But I am protected by a higher power, for I still have work to do. Your end will be bitter as wormwood and sharp as a two-edged sword. Your feet shall go down to death, and your steps take hold on hell." ”

“ And for awhile you do not know what it means, for love has never yet touched you with his red-hot finger."
"How absurd!" thought Sylvia to herself. "She actually takes me for a young girl! What ridiculous mistakes fortune-tellers do make, to be sure!"
"——But you cannot escape love," went on Madame Cagliostra, eagerly. "Your fate is a fair man, which is strange considering that you also are a fair woman; and I see that there is already a dark man in your life."
Sylvia blushed. Bill Chester, just now the only man in her life, was a very dark man. ”

“ For the first time since Sylvia had come to Lacville, neither she nor Count Paul spent any part of that afternoon at the Casino. They were both at that happy stage of—shall we say friendship?—when a man and a woman cannot see too much of one another; when time is as if it were not; when nothing said or done can be wrong in the other's sight; when Love is still a soft and an invisible presence, with naught about him of the exacting tyrant he will so soon become. ”

“ L'Ami Fritz now stood staring at her. He had put his right hand—the hand holding the thing he had taken out of the drawer—behind his back. He was very pale; the sweat had broken out on his sallow, thin face.
For a horrible moment there floated across Sylvia's sub-conscious mind the thought of Anna Wolsky, and of what she now knew to have been Anna Wolsky's fate.
But she put that thought, that awful knowledge, determinedly away from her. The instinct of self-preservation possessed her wholly. ”

“ In the week that had gone by since Sylvia had paid her first visit to Lacville, the Villa had gradually filled up with people eager, like herself, to escape from the heat and dust of Paris, and the pleasant little table by the window had been appropriated by someone else.
When the young Englishwoman came into the dining-room, the Comte de Virieu got up from his chair, and clicking his heels together, bowed low and gravely.
She had never seen a man do that before. And it looked so funny! Sylvia felt inclined to burst out laughing. ”

“ It was fortunate that none of these respectable ladies could see Sylvia now!
To those who regard gambling as justifiable, provided the gambler's means allow of it, even to those who habitually see women indulging in games of chance, there will, of course, be something absurd in the point of view of the solicitor. But to such a man as Bill Chester, the sight of the woman for whom he had always felt a very sincere respect, as well as a far more enduring and jealous affection than he quite realised, sitting there at a public gaming table, was a staggering—nay, a disgusting—spectacle. ”

“ Sylvia felt vexed and disappointed. After what had been to her a very exciting, agitating conversation with Count Paul, she had unconsciously longed for the cheerful, commonplace talk of Madame Wachner.
As she stood there in the bright sunlight the thought of the long, lonely, hot walk back to the Villa du Lac became odious to her.
Why should she not go into the house and rest awhile? The more so that the Wachners would almost certainly return home very soon. They disliked Paris, and never stayed more than a couple of hours on their occasional visits there. ”

“ But she allowed Sylvia to follow her into the bright, clean little kitchen, of which the door was just opposite the drawing-room.
"What a charming little cuisine!" cried Sylvia smiling. She was glad to find something that she could honestly praise, and the kitchen was, in truth, the pleasantest place in the house, exquisitely neat, with the brass batterie de cuisine shining and bright. "Your day servant must be an exceptionally clean woman."
"Yes," said Madame Wachner, in a rather dissatisfied tone, "she is well enough. But, oh, those French people, how eager they are for money! ”

“ Madame Cagliostra had sunk down into her chair again.
"I must beg you to go away, Mesdames," she muttered, faintly. "Five francs is all I ask of you."
But Anna Wolsky was behaving in what appeared to Sylvia a very strange manner. She walked round to where the fortune-teller was sitting.
"You saw something in the cards which you do not wish to tell me?" she said imperiously. "I do not mind being told the truth. I am not a child."
"I swear I saw nothing!" cried the Frenchwoman angrily. "I am too ill to see anything. The cards were to me perfectly blank!" ”

“ For one thing, she must be—well, rather ashamed of the way she treated you—you who were so kind to her, Sylvie!"
"She was far kinder to me than I was to her," said Sylvia in a low voice.
"Ah, my dear"—Madame Wachner put her fat hand on Sylvia's shoulder—"you have such a kind, warm, generous heart—that is the truth! No, no, Anna Wolsky was not able to appreciate such a friend as you are! But now the tea is made, made strong to the English taste, we must not leave L'Ami Fritz and Mr. Chester alone together. Gentleman are dull without ladies." ”

“ Each man helped another over very quietly, and then the three gendarmes dispersed with swift, noiseless steps, each seeking a point of vantage commanding the house.
Chester and Paul de Virieu walked quickly up the path.
Suddenly a shaft of bright light pierced the moonlit darkness. The shutters of the dining-room of the Châlet des Muguets had been unbarred, and the window was thrown wide open.
"Qui va là?" the old military watchword, as the Frenchman remembered with a sense of terrible irony, was flung out into the night in the harsh, determined voice of Madame Wachner. ”

“ How strangely lonely the little house looked, standing back in the twilit darkness of a summer night.
"I wonder"—Sylvia Bailey looked up at her silent companion, L'Ami Fritz had not opened his lips once during the walk from the Casino, "I wonder that you and Madame Wachner are not afraid to leave the châlet alone for so many hours of each day! Your servant always goes away after lunch, doesn't she?"
"There is nothing to steal," he answered shortly. "We always carry all our money about with us—all sensible people do so at Lacville and at Monte Carlo." ”

“ She only touched on the delightful time she had had in Paris, and she said nothing of Lacville.
Long before the others had finished, Count Paul got up; before leaving the dining-room, he turned and bowed ceremoniously to Sylvia and her companion. With his disappearance it seemed to Chester that Sylvia at once became her natural, simple, eager, happy self. She talked less, she listened more, and at last Chester began to enjoy his holiday.
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. ”

“ I could wait on the staircase till you were ready for me to come back. It is not very pleasant to have one's fortune told when one is as young and as pretty as you are, before other people."
"Of course I don't mind your being here!" cried Sylvia Bailey, laughing—then, looking doubtfully at Madame Cagliostra, though it was obvious the Frenchwoman did not understand English, "The truth is that I should feel rather frightened if you were to leave me here all by myself. So please stay." ”

“ To the average Frenchman every woman is interesting; for every Frenchman is in love with love, and in each fair stranger he sees the possible heroine of a romance in which he may play the agreeable part of hero. So it was that Sylvia Bailey and Anna Wolsky both had their silent admirers among those who lunched and dined in the narrow green and white dining-room of the Hôtel de l'Horloge. ”

“ We were going too fast."
"Is it possible, is it conceivable, that you are thinking of marrying this Frenchman?"
"No," said Sylvia, very quietly, "I am not thinking of marrying the Comte de Virieu. But he is my friend. I—I like and respect him. No, Bill, you need not fear that the Comte de Virieu will ever ask me to become his wife."
"But if he did?" asked Chester, hoarsely.
"You have no right to ask me such a question," she answered, passionately; and then, after a pause, she added, in a low voice: "But if he did, I should say no, Bill." ”

“ Well! Well! I never should have thought to have seen my dear Puritan, Sylvia Bailey, in such a place as the Casino of Lacville?" said the Polish lady laughing. "However, as you are here, let us enjoy ourselves. Would you like to risk a few francs?"
Together they had gone back into the Salle des Jeux, and Anna drew Sylvia towards the nearest table.
"This is a child's game!" she exclaimed, contemptuously. "I cannot understand how all these clever Parisians can care to come out here and lose their money every Saturday and Sunday, to say nothing of other days!" ”

“ Madame Wachner reverentially took up the pearls in her large hand; she seemed to be weighing them.
"How heavy they are," she said at length, and now she spoke French.
"Yes," said Sylvia, "you can always tell a real pearl by its weight."
"And to think," went on her hostess musingly, "that each of these tiny balls is worth—how much is it worth?—at least five or six hundred francs, I suppose?"
"Yes," said Sylvia again, "I'm glad to say they have increased in value during the last few years. You see, pearls are the only really fashionable gems just now." ”

“ In speaking to her as he had forced himself to speak, the Frenchman had done an unselfish and kindly action. Sylvia's gentle and unsophisticated charm had touched him deeply, and so he had given her what he knew to be the best possible advice.
"I am not so foolish as to pretend that the people who come and play in the Casino of Lacville are all confirmed gamblers," he said, slowly. "We French take our pleasures lightly, Madame, and no doubt there is many an excellent Parisian bourgeois who comes here and makes or loses his few francs, and gets no harm from it. ”

“ Madame Wachner had suddenly become very serious, her stout red face was set in rather grim, grave lines; and twice, as Sylvia was eating the little piece of galantine which had been placed on her plate by L'Ami Fritz, she looked up and caught her hostess's eyes fixed on her with a curious, alien scrutiny.
When they had almost finished the meat, Madame Wachner suddenly exclaimed in French.
"Fritz! You have forgotten to mix the salad! Whatever made you forget such an important thing? You will find what is necessary in the drawer behind you." ”

“ But all he saw, when he had lighted the candle which stood on the table by his bed, was the barely furnished room which, even in this poor and wavering light, had so cheerful and commonplace an appearance.
Owing no doubt to his excellent physical condition, as well as to his good conscience, Chester was a fearless man. A week ago he would have laughed to scorn the notion that the dead ever revisit the earth, as so many of us believe they do, but the four nights he had spent at the Pension Malfait, had shaken his conviction that "dead men rise up never." ”

“ Drive as quickly as you like, but drive carefully."
They swept on through the town, and so along the dimly-lighted shady avenues with which even Chester had become so familiar during the last few days.
Paul de Virieu sat with clenched hands, staring in front of him. Remorse filled his soul—remorse and anguish. If Sylvia had been done to death, as he now had very little doubt Anna Wolsky had been done to death, then he would die too. What was the vice which had meant all to him for so many years compared to his love for Sylvia?
The gendarmes murmured together in quick, excited tones. ”

“ If the Wachners were rich enough to gamble, surely they had enough money to live more comfortably than they were now doing? It was clear that they hardly used the dining-room and drawing-room of the little villa at all. When Sylvia had been looking for the butter, she had not been able to help seeing that in the tiny larder there was only a small piece of cheese, a little cold meat, and a couple of eggs on a plate. No wonder Monsieur Wachner had heartily enjoyed the copious, if rather roughly-prepared, meal at the Pension Malfait. ”