The Chink in the Armour Part 13

But Sylvia was not a child; she was a very lovely young woman. Comte Paul de Virieu's heart began to beat.

But, bah! This was absurd! His day of love and love-making lay far, far behind him. He rose and walked towards the door.

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. But, still, I swore to myself that I would warn you of the danger--"

They went out into the bright sunshine again, and Sylvia somehow felt as if she had made a friend--a real friend--in the Comte de Virieu. It was a curious sensation, and one that gave her more pleasure than she would have cared to own even to herself.

Most of the men she had met since she became a widow treated her as an irresponsible being. Many of them tried to flirt with her for the mere pleasure of flirting with so pretty a woman; others, so she was resentfully aware, had only become really interested in her when they became aware that she had been left by her husband with an income of two thousand pounds a year. She had had several offers of marriage since her widowhood, but not one of the men who had come and said he loved her had confessed as much about himself as this stranger had done.

She was the more touched and interested because the Frenchman's manner was extremely reserved. Even in the short time she had been at the Villa du Lac, Sylvia had realised that though the Count was on speaking terms with most of his fellow-guests, he seemed intimate with none of the people whose happy chatter had filled the dining-room the night before.

Just before going back into the Villa, Sylvia stopped short; she fixed her large ingenuous eyes on the Count's face.

"I want to thank you again," she said diffidently, "for your kindness in giving me this warning. You know we in England have a proverb, 'Forewarned is forearmed.' Well, believe me, I will not forget what you have said, and--and I am grateful for your confidence. Of course, I regard it as quite private."

The Count looked at her for a moment in silence, and then he said very deliberately,

"I am afraid the truth about me is known to all those good enough to concern themselves with my affairs. I am sure, for instance, that your Polish friend is well aware of it! You see before you a man who has lost every penny he owned in the world, who does not know how to work, and who is living on the charity of relations."

Sylvia had never heard such bitter accents issue from human lips before.

"The horse you saw me ride this morning," he went on in a low tone, "is not my horse; it belongs to my brother-in-law. It is sent for me every day because my sister loves me, and she thinks my health will suffer if I do not take exercise. My brother-in-law did not give me the horse, though he is the most generous of human beings, for he feared that if he did I should sell it in order that I might have more money for play."

There was a long, painful pause, then in a lighter tone the Count added, "And now, au revoir, Madame, and forgive me for having thrust my private affairs on your notice! It is not a thing I have been tempted ever to do before with one whom I have the honour of knowing as slightly as I know yourself."

Sylvia went upstairs to her room. She was touched, moved, excited. It was quite a new experience with her to come so really near to any man's heart and conscience.

Life is a secret and a tangled skein, full of loose, almost invisible threads. This curiously intimate, and yet impersonal conversation with one who was not only a stranger, but also a foreigner, made her realise how little we men and women really know of one another. How small was her knowledge, for instance, of Bill Chester--though, to be sure, of him there was perhaps nothing to know. How really little also she knew of Anna Wolsky! They had become friends, and yet Anna had never confided to her any intimate or secret thing about herself. Why, she did not even know Anna's home address!

Sylvia felt that there was now a link which hardly anything could break between herself and this Frenchman, whom she had never seen till a week ago. Even if they never met again after to-day, she would never forget that he had allowed her to see into the core of his sad, embittered heart. He had lifted a corner of the veil which covered his conscience, and he had done this in order that he might save her, a stranger, from what he knew by personal experience to be a terrible fate!

CHAPTER VII

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 s.p.a.cious, luxurious, and quiet. M. Polperro's clients spent, or so Sylvia supposed, much of their time in their own rooms upstairs, or else in the Casino, while many of them had their own motors, and went out on long excursions. They were cosmopolitans, and among them were a number of Russians.

Here at the Pension Malfait, the clientele was French. All was loud talking, bustle, and laughter. The large house contained several young men who had daily work in Paris. Others, like Madame Wolsky, were at Lacville in order to indulge their pa.s.sion for play, and quite a number of people came in simply for meals.

Among these last, rather to Sylvia's surprise, were Monsieur and Madame Wachner, the middle-aged couple whom Anna Wolsky had pointed out as having been at Aix-les-Bains the year before, at the same time as she was herself.

The husband and wife were now sitting almost exactly opposite Anna and Sylvia at the narrow table d'hote, and again a broad, sunny smile lit up the older woman's face when she looked across at the two friends.

"We meet again!" she exclaimed in a guttural voice, and then in French, addressing Madame Wolsky, "This is not very much like Aix-les-Bains, is it, Madame?"

Anna shook her head.

"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. "You may have heard of it?" and she fixed her small, intensely bright eyes inquiringly on Anna.

Anna bent her head.

"Yes, I heard all about it" she said gravely. "You mean about your friend who was drowned in the lake? It must have been a very distressing thing for you and your husband."

"Yes, indeed! He never can bear to speak of it."

And Sylvia, looking over at the man sitting just opposite to herself, saw a look of unease come over his sallow face. He was eating his omelette steadily, looking neither to the right nor to the left.

"Ami Fritz!" cried his wife, turning suddenly to him, and this time she spoke English, "Say, 'How d'you do,' to this lady! You will remember that we used to see 'er at Aix, in the Casino there?"

"Ami Fritz" bowed his head, but remained silent.

"Yes," his wife went on, volubly, "that sad affair made Aix very unpleasant to us! After that we spent the winter in various pensions, and then, instead of going back to Aix, we came 'ere. So far, I am quite satisfied with Lacville."

Though she spoke with a very bad accent and dropped her aitches, her English was quick and colloquial.

"Lacville is a cosy, 'appy place!" she cried, and this time she smiled full at Sylvia, and Sylvia told herself that the woman's face, if very plain, was like a sunflower,--so broad, so kindly, so good-humoured!

When dejeuner was over, the four had coffee together, and the melancholy Monsieur Wachner, who was so curiously unlike his bright, vivacious wife, at last broke into eager talk, for he and Anna Wolsky had begun to discuss different gambling systems. His face lighted up; it was easy to see what interested and stimulated this long, lanky man whose wife addressed him constantly as "Ami Fritz."

"Now 'e is what the English call 'obby-'orse riding," she exclaimed, with a loud laugh. "To see 'im in all 'is glory you should see my Fritz at Monte Carlo!" she was speaking to Sylvia. "There 'as never been a system invented in connection with that devil-game, Roulette, that L'Ami Fritz does not know, and that 'e 'as not--at some time or other--played more to 'is satisfaction than to mine!" But she spoke very good-humouredly. "'E cannot ring many changes on Baccarat, and I do not often allow 'im to play downstairs. No, no, that is too dangerous! That is for children and fools!"

Sylvia was still too ignorant of play to understand the full significance of Madame Wachner's words, but she was vaguely interested, though she could not understand one word of the eager talk between Anna and the man.

"Let us leave them at it!" exclaimed the older woman, suddenly. "It will be much nicer in the garden, Madame, for it is not yet too 'ot for out of doors. By the way, I forgot to tell you my name. That was very rude of me! My name is Wachner--Sophie Wachner, at your service."

"And my name is Bailey--Sylvia Bailey."

"Ah, I thought so--you are a Mees!"

"No," said Sylvia gravely, "I am a widow."

Madame Wachner's face became very serious.

"Ah," she said, sympathetically, "that is sad--very sad for one so young and so beautiful!"

Sylvia smiled. Madame Wachner was certainly a kindly, warm-hearted sort of woman.

They walked out together into the narrow garden, and soon Madame Wachner began to amuse her companion by lively, shrewd talk, and they spent a pleasant half hour pacing up and down.