Mrs. Belloc Lowndes

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The orangery was cool, fragrant, deserted; remote indeed from all that Lacville stands for in this ugly, utilitarian world.
"Won't you sit down?" he said slowly. And then, as if echoing his companion's thoughts, "It seems a long, long time since we were first in the orangery, Madame——"
"——When you asked me so earnestly to leave Lacville," said Sylvia, trying to speak lightly. She sat down on the circular stone seat, and, as he had done on that remembered morning when they were still strangers, he took his place at the other end of it. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now no man, least of all a Frenchman, likes to feel that this time has come, and it was inexpressibly delightful to him to know that he had been mistaken—that he could still enjoy the most absorbing and enchanting sensation vouchsafed to poor humanity.
He was in love! In love for the first time for many years, and with a sweet, happy-natured woman, who became more intimately dear to him every moment that went by. Indeed, he knew that the real reason why he had felt so depressed last night and even this morning was because he was parted from Sylvia. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ She bent down, and Sylvia, to her confusion and surprise, felt her cheeks lightly kissed by the withered lips of Paul de Virieu's godmother.
"Madame Bailey's rouge is natural; it does not come off!" the old lady exclaimed, and a smile crept over her parchment-coloured face. "Not but what a great deal of nonsense is talked about the usage of rouge, my dear children! There is no harm in supplementing the niggardly gifts of nature. You, for instance, Marie-Anne, would look all the better for a little rouge!" ”

“ 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." ”

“ Would Sylvia ever cling to this man as she had clung to him—would she ever allow Chester to kiss her as she had allowed Paul to kiss her, and that after he had released the hand she had laid in his?
But alas! there are kisses and kisses—clingings and clingings. Chester, so the Frenchman with his wide disillusioned knowledge of life felt only too sure, would win Sylvia in time. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Suddenly Madame Cagliostra began to speak in a quick, clear, monotonous voice.
Keeping her eyes fixed on the cards, which now and again she touched with a fat finger, and without looking at Sylvia, she said:
"Madame has led a very placid, quiet life. Her existence has been a boat that has always lain in harbour——" She suddenly looked up: "I spent my childhood at Dieppe, and that often suggests images to me," she observed complacently, and then she went on in quite another tone of voice:—
"To return to Madame and her fate! ”

“ And then, with a shock of surprise which sent the blood to his cheeks, Chester suddenly saw that Sylvia Bailey was sitting nearly opposite to where he himself was standing.
There are certain scenes, certain human groupings of individuals, which remain fixed for ever against the screen of memory. Bill Chester will never forget the sight which was presented to him in the Lacville Casino by the particular group on which his tired eyes became focussed with growing amazement and attention. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Once more the crowd excitedly followed her luck, staring at her with grateful pleasure, with fascinated interest, as she brought them temporary wealth.
The more she won, the more she made other people win, the more miserable Sylvia felt, and as she saw Count Paul's heap of notes and gold diminishing, she grew unutterably wretched. Eight hundred pounds? What an enormous lot of money to risk in an evening! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Mind you, I do not say that a gambler does not make a kind husband. We have an example"—she smiled a little——"in this Monsieur Wachner. He is certainly very fond of his wife, and she is very fond of him. But would you like your husband always to prefer his vice to you?"
Sylvia made no answer.
"But why am I talking like that?" Anna Wolsky started up suddenly. "It is absurd of me to think it possible that you would dream of marrying the Comte de Virieu! No, no, my dear child, this poor Frenchman is one of those men who, even if personally charming, no wise woman would think of marrying. ”