The Chink in the Armour Part 18

Still, she accompanied the others to the Club, and together with Madame Wachner, she sat down some way from the tables. In a very few minutes they were joined by the other two, who had by now lost quite enough gold pieces to make them both feel angry with themselves, and, what was indeed unfair, with poor Sylvia.

"I'm sure that if you had played again, and if we had followed your play, we should have added to our winnings instead of losing, as we have done,"

said Anna crossly.

"I'm so sorry," and Sylvia felt really distressed. Anna had never spoken crossly to her before.

"Forgive me!" cried the Polish woman, suddenly softening. "I ought not to have said that to you, dear little friend. No doubt we should all have lost just the same. You know that fortune-teller told me that I should make plenty of money--well, even now I have had a splendid day!"

"Do come back with me and have dinner at the Villa du Lac," said Sylvia eagerly.

They shook hands with the Wachners, and as they walked the short distance from the Casino to the villa, Sylvia told Anna all about her visit to the Chalet des Muguets.

"They seem nice homely people," she said, "and Madame Wachner was really very kind."

"Yes, no doubt; but she is a very strict wife," answered Anna smiling.

"The poor man had not one penny piece till she came in, and he got so angry and impatient waiting for her! I really felt inclined to lend him a little money; but I have made it a rule never to lend money in a Casino; it only leads to unpleasantness afterwards."

In the hall of the Villa du Lac the Comte de Virieu was standing reading a paper. He was dressed for dinner, and he bowed distantly as the two ladies came in.

"Why, there is the Comte de Virieu!" exclaimed Anna, in a low, and far from a pleased tone. "I had no idea he was staying here."

"Yes, he is staying here," said Sylvia, blus.h.i.+ng uneasily, and quickly she led the way upstairs. It wanted a few minutes to seven.

Anna Wolsky waited till the door of Sylvia's room was shut, and then,

"I cannot help being sorry that you are staying in the same hotel as that man," she said, seriously. "Do not get to know him too well, dear Sylvia.

The Count is a worthless individual; he has gambled away two fortunes.

And now, instead of working, he is content to live on an allowance made to him by his sister's husband, the Duc d'Eglemont. If I were you, I should keep on very distant terms with him. He is, no doubt, always looking out for a nice rich woman to marry."

Sylvia made no answer. She felt she could not trust herself to speak; and there came over her a feeling of intense satisfaction that Anna Wolsky was not staying here with her at the Villa du Lac.

She also made up her mind that next time she entertained Anna she would do so at the restaurant of which the cooking had been so highly commended by Madame Wachner.

The fact that Madame Wolsky thought so ill of the Comte de Virieu made Sylvia feel uncomfortable all through dinner. But the Count, though he again bowed when the two friends came into the dining-room, did not come over and speak to them, as Sylvia had felt sure he would do this evening.

After dinner he disappeared, and Sylvia took Anna out into the garden.

But she did not show her the _potager_. The old kitchen-garden already held for her a.s.sociations which she did not wish to spoil or even to disturb.

Madame Wolsky, sipping M. Polperro's excellent coffee, again mentioned the Count.

"I am exceedingly surprised to see him here at Lacville," she said in a musing voice, "I should have expected him to go to a more _chic_ place.

He always plays in the winter at Monte Carlo."

Sylvia summoned up courage to protest.

"But, Anna," she exclaimed, "surely the Comte de Virieu is only doing what a great many other people do!"

Anna laughed good-humouredly.

"I see what you mean," she said. "You think it is a case of 'the pot calling the kettle black.' How excellent are your English proverbs, dear Sylvia! But no, it is quite different. Take me. I have an income, and choose to spend it in gambling. I might prefer to have a big house, or perhaps I should say a small house, for I am not a very rich woman. But no, I like play, and I am free to spend my money as I like. The Comte de Virieu is very differently situated! He is, so I've been told, a clever, cultivated man. He ought to be working--doing something for his country's good. And then he is so disagreeable! He makes no friends, no acquaintances. He always looks as if he was doing something of which he was ashamed. He never appears gay or satisfied, not even when he is winning--"

"He does not look as cross as Monsieur Wachner," said Sylvia, smiling.

"Monsieur Wachner is like me," said Anna calmly. "He probably made a fortune in business, and now he and his wife enjoy risking a little money at play. Why should they not?"

"Madame Wachner told me to-day all about their poor friend who was drowned," said Sylvia irrelevantly.

"Ah, yes, that was a sad affair! They were very foolish to become so intimate with him. Why, they actually had him staying with them at the time! You see, they had a villa close to the lake-side. And this young Russian, it appears, was very fond of boating. It was a mysterious affair, because, oddly enough, he had not been out in the town, or even to the Casino, for four days before the accident happened. There was a notion among some people that he had committed suicide, but that, I fancy, was not so. He had won a large sum of money. Some thought the gold weighed down his body in the water--. But that is absurd. It must have been the weeds."

"Madame Wachner told me that quite a lot of money was found in his room,"

said Sylvia quickly.

"No, that is not true. About four hundred francs were found in his bed-room. That was all. I fancy the police made themselves rather unpleasant to Monsieur Wachner. The Russian Emba.s.sy made inquiries, and it seemed so odd to the French authorities that the poor fellow could not be identified. They found no pa.s.sport, no papers of any sort--"

"Have you a pa.s.sport?" asked Sylvia. "Madame Wachner asked me if I had one. But I've never even seen a pa.s.sport!"

"No," said Anna, "I have not got a pa.s.sport now. I once had one, but I lost it. One does not require such a thing in a civilised country! But a Russian must always have a pa.s.sport, it is an absolute law in Russia. And the disappearance of that young man's pa.s.sport was certainly strange--in fact, the whole affair was mysterious."

"It must have been terrible for Monsieur and Madame Wachner," said Sylvia thoughtfully.

"Oh yes, very disagreeable indeed! Luckily he is entirely absorbed in his absurd systems, and she is a very cheerful woman."

"Yes, indeed she is!" Sylvia could not help smiling. "I am glad we have got to know them, Anna. It is rather mournful when one knows no one at all in a place of this kind."

And Anna agreed, indifferently.

CHAPTER X

And then there began a series of long cloudless days for Sylvia Bailey.

For the first time she felt as if she was seeing life, and such seeing was very pleasant to her.

Not in her wildest dreams, during the placid days of her girlhood and brief married life, had she conceived of so interesting and so exhilarating an existence as that which she was now leading! And this was perhaps owing in a measure to the fact that there is, if one may so express it, a spice of naughtiness in life as led at Lacville.

In a mild, a very mild, way Sylvia Bailey had fallen a victim to the G.o.ddess of Play. She soon learned to look forward to the hours she and Anna Wolsky spent each day at the baccarat tables. But, unlike Anna, Sylvia was never tempted to risk a greater sum on that dangerous green cloth than she could comfortably afford to lose, and perhaps just because this was so, on the whole she won money rather than lost it.

A certain change had come over the relations of the two women. They still met daily, if only at the Casino, and they occasionally took a walk or a drive together, but Madame Wolsky--and Sylvia Bailey felt uneasy and growing concern that it was so--now lived for play, and play alone.

Absorbed in the simple yet fateful turns of the game, Anna would remain silent for hours, immersed in calculations, and scarcely aware of what went on round her. She and Monsieur Wachner--"L'Ami Fritz," as even Sylvia had fallen into the way of calling him--seemed scarcely alive unless they were standing or sitting round a baccarat table, putting down or taking up the s.h.i.+ning gold pieces which they treated as carelessly as if they were counters.

But it was not the easy, idle, purposeless life she was now leading that brought the pretty English widow that strange, unacknowledged feeling of entire content with life.

What made existence at Lacville so exciting and so exceptionally interesting to Sylvia Bailey was her friends.h.i.+p with Comte Paul de Virieu.

There is in every woman a pa.s.sion for romance, and in Sylvia this pa.s.sion had been baulked, not satisfied, by her first marriage.