The Essential Writings of Marie Belloc Lowndes. Marie Belloc Lowndes

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Paul.

      Chester hurried towards them. How odd they both looked—and how ill at ease! The Comte de Virieu looked wretched, preoccupied, and gloomy—as well he might do, considering the large sum of money he had lost last night. As for Sylvia—yes, there could be no doubt about it—she had been crying! When she saw Chester coming towards her, she instinctively tilted her garden hat over her face to hide her reddened eyelids. He felt at once sorry for, and angry with, her.

      "I came early in order to tell you," he said abruptly, "that I find I must leave Lacville to-day! The man whom I am expecting to join me in Switzerland is getting impatient, so I've given notice to the Pension Malfait—in fact, I've already packed."

      Sylvia gave him a listless glance, and made no comment on his news.

      Chester felt rather nettled. "You, I suppose, will be staying on here for some time?" he said.

      "I don't know," she answered in a low voice. "I haven't made up my mind how long I shall stay here."

      "I also am leaving Lacville," said the Comte de Virieu.

      And then, as he saw, or fancied he saw, a satirical expression pass over the Englishman's face, he added rather haughtily:

      "Strange to say, my luck turned last night—I admit I did not deserve it—and I left off with a good deal to the good. However, I feel I have played enough for a while, and, as I have been telling Mrs. Bailey, I think it would do me good to go away. In fact"—and then Count Paul gave an odd little laugh—"I also am going to Switzerland! In old days I was a member of our Alpine Club."

      Chester made a sudden resolve, and, what was rare in one so constitutionally prudent, acted on it at once.

      "If you are really going to Switzerland," he said quietly, "then why should we not travel together? I meant to go to-night, but if you prefer to wait till to-morrow, Count, I can alter my arrangements."

      The Comte de Virieu remained silent for what seemed to the two waiting for his answer a very long time.

      "This evening will suit me just as well as to-morrow," he said at last.

      He did not look at Sylvia. He had not looked her way since Chester had joined them. With a hand that shook a little he took his cigarette-case out of his pocket, and held it out to the other man.

      The die was cast. So be it. Chester, prig though he might be, was right in his wish to remove Sylvia from his, Paul de Virieu's, company. The Englishman was more right than he would ever know.

      How amazed Chester would have been had he been able to see straight into Paul de Virieu's heart! Had he divined the other's almost unendurable temptation to take Sylvia Bailey at her word, to impose on her pathetic ignorance of life, to allow her to become a gambler's wife.

      Had the woman he loved been penniless, the Comte de Virieu would probably have yielded to the temptation which now came in the subtle garb of jealousy—keen, poisoned-fanged jealousy of this fine looking young Englishman who stood before them both.

      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.

      "Shall we go in and find out the time of the Swiss express?" he asked the other man, "or perhaps you have already decided on a train?"

      "No, I haven't looked one out yet."

      They strolled off together towards the house, and Sylvia walked blindly on to the grass and sat down on one of the rocking-chairs of which M. Polperro was so proud.

      She looked after the two men with a sense of oppressed bewilderment. Then they were both going away—both going to leave her?

      After to-day—how strange, how utterly unnatural the parting seemed—she would probably never see Paul de Virieu again.

      The day went like a dream—a fantastic, unreal dream.

      Sylvia did not see Count Paul again alone. She and Chester went a drive in the afternoon—the expedition had been arranged the day before with the Wachners, and there seemed no valid reason why it should be put off.

      And then Madame Wachner with her usual impulsive good nature, on hearing that both Chester and the Comte de Virieu were going away, warmly invited Sylvia to supper at the Châlet des Muguets for that same night, and Sylvia listlessly accepted. She did not care what she did or where she went.

      At last came the moment of parting.

      "I'll go and see you off at the station," she said, and Chester, rather surprised, raised one or two objections. "I'm determined to come," she cried angrily. "What a pity it is, Bill, that you always try and manage other people's business for them!"

      And she did go to the station—only to be sorry for it afterwards.

      Paul de Virieu, holding her hand tightly clasped in his for the last time, had become frightfully pale, and as she made her way back to the Casino, where the Wachners were actually waiting for her, Sylvia was haunted by his reproachful, despairing eyes.

      Chapter XXIV

       Table of Contents

      It was nearly nine o'clock, and for the moment the Casino was very empty, for the afternoon players had left, and the evening serie, as M. Polperro contemptuously called them—the casual crowd of night visitors to Lacville—had not yet arrived from Paris.

      "And now," said Madame Wachner, suddenly, "is it not time for us to go and 'ave our little supper?"

      The "citizeness of the world" had been watching her husband and Sylvia playing at Baccarat; both of them had won, and Sylvia had welcomed, eagerly, the excitement of the tables.

      Count Paul's muttered farewell echoed in her ears, and the ornately decorated gambling room seemed full of his presence.

      She made a great effort to put any intimate thought of him away. The next day, so she told herself, she would go back to England, to Market Dalling. There she must forget that such a place as Lacville existed; there she must banish Paul de Virieu from her heart and memory. Yes, there was nothing now to keep her here, in this curious place, where she had eaten, in more than one sense, of the bitter fruit of the tree of knowledge.

      With a deep, involuntary sigh, she rose from the table.

      She looked at the green cloth, at the people standing round it, with an odd feeling that neither the table nor the people round her were quite real. Her heart and thoughts were far away, with the two men both of whom loved her in their very different ways.

      Then she turned with an unmirthful smile to her companions. It would not be fair to let her private griefs sadden the kindly Wachners. It was really good of them to have asked her to come back to supper at the Châlet des Muguets. She would have found it terribly lonely this evening at the Villa du Lac....

      "I СКАЧАТЬ