The Greatest Works of Marie Belloc Lowndes. Marie Belloc Lowndes
sit by her, instead he so placed himself that he looked across at her slender, rounded figure, and happy smiling face.
"Are you thinking of staying long at Lacville, Madame?" he asked abruptly.
"I don't know," she answered hesitatingly. "It will depend on my friend Madame Wolsky's plans. If we both like it, I daresay we shall stay three or four weeks."
There fell what seemed to Sylvia a long silence between them. The Frenchman was gazing at her with a puzzled, thoughtful look.
Suddenly he got up, and after taking a turn up and down the orangery, he came and stood before her.
"Mrs. Bailey!" he exclaimed. "Will you permit me to be rather impertinent?"
Sylvia reddened violently. The question took her utterly by surprise. But the Comte de Virieu's next words at once relieved, and yes, it must be admitted, chagrined her.
"I ask you, Madame, to leave Lacville! I ask permission to tell you frankly and plainly that it is not a place to which you ought to have been brought."
He spoke with great emphasis.
Sylvia looked up at him. She was bewildered, and though not exactly offended, rather hurt.
"But why?" she asked plaintively. "Why should I not stay at Lacville?"
"Oh, well, there can be no harm in your staying on a few days if you are desirous of doing so. But Lacville is not a place where I should care for my own sister to come and stay." He went on, speaking much quicker—"Indeed, I will say more! I will tell you that Lacville may seem a paradise to you, but that it is a paradise full of snakes."
"Snakes?" repeated Sylvia slowly. "You mean, of course, human snakes?"
He bowed gravely.
"Every town where reigns the Goddess of play attracts reptiles, Madame, as the sun attracts lizards! It is not the game that does so, or even the love of play in the Goddess's victims; no, it is the love of gold!"
Sylvia noticed that he had grown curiously pale.
"Lacville as a gambling centre counts only next to Monte Carlo. But whereas many people go to Monte Carlo for health, and for various forms of amusement, people only come here in order to play, and to see others play. The Casino, which doubtless appears to you a bright, pretty place, has been the scene and the cause of many a tragedy. Do you know how Paris regards Lacville?" he asked searchingly.
"No—yes," Sylvia hesitated. "You see I never heard of Lacville till about a week ago." Innate honesty compelled her to add, "But I have heard that the Paris trades-people don't like Lacville."
"Let me tell you one thing," the Count spoke with extraordinary seriousness. "Every tradesman in Paris, without a single exception, has signed a petition imploring the Government to suspend the Gambling Concession!"
"What an extraordinary thing!" exclaimed Sylvia, and she was surprised indeed.
"Pardon me, it is not at all extraordinary. A great deal of the money which would otherwise go into the pockets of these tradesmen goes now to enrich the anonymous shareholders of the Casino of Lacville! Of course, Paris hotel-keepers are not in quite the same position as are the other Parisian trades-people. Lacville does not do them much harm, for the place is so near Paris that foreigners, if they go there at all, generally go out for the day. Only the most confirmed gambler cares actually to live at Lacville."
He looked significantly at Sylvia, and she felt a wave of hot colour break over her face.
"Yes, I know what you must be thinking, and it is, indeed, the shameful truth! I, Madame, have the misfortune to be that most miserable and most God-forsaken of living beings, a confirmed gambler."
The Count spoke in a tone of stifled pain, almost anger, and Sylvia gazed up at his stern, sad face with pity and concern filling her kind heart.
"I will tell you my story in a few words," he went on, and then he sat down by her, and began tracing with his stick imaginary patterns on the stone floor.
"I was destined for what I still regard as the most agreeable career in the world—that of diplomacy. You see how I speak English? Well, Madame, I speak German and Spanish equally well. And then, most unhappily for me, my beloved mother died, and I inherited from her a few thousand pounds. I felt very miserable, and I happened to be at the moment idle. A friend persuaded me to go to Monte Carlo. That fortnight, Madame, changed my life—made me what the English call 'an idle good-for-nothing.' Can you wonder that I warn you against staying at Lacville?"
Sylvia was touched, as well as surprised, by his confidences. His words breathed sincerity, and the look of humiliation and pain on his face had deepened. He looked white and drawn.
"It is very kind of you to tell me this, and I am very much obliged to you for your warning," she said in a low tone.
But the Comte de Virieu went on as if he hardly heard her words.
"The lady with whom you first came to Lacville—I mean the Polish lady—is well known to me by sight. For the last three years I have seen her at Monte Carlo in the winter, and at Spa and Aix-les-Bains in the summer. Of course I was not at all surprised to see her turn up here, but I confess, Madame, that I was very much astonished to see with her a"—he hesitated a moment—"a young English lady. You would, perhaps, be offended if I were to tell you exactly what I felt when I saw you at the Casino!"
"I do not suppose I should be offended," said Sylvia softly.
"I felt, Madame, as if I saw a lily growing in a field of high, rank, evil-smelling—nay, perhaps I should say, poisonous—weeds."
"But I cannot go away now!" cried Sylvia. She was really impressed—very uncomfortably impressed—by his earnest words. "It would be most unkind to my friend, Madame Wolsky. Surely, it is possible to stay at Lacville, and even to play a little, without anything very terrible happening?" She looked at him coaxingly, anxiously, as a child might have done.
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