Yes, she had done well to come here, to a place of which, no doubt, many of her English friends would have thoroughly disapproved! But, after all, what was wrong about Lacville? Where, for the matter of that, was the harm of playing for money if one could afford to lose it? Sylvia had hardly ever met so kind or so intelligent a woman as was her new friend, Anna Wolsky: and Anna--she made no secret of it at all--allowed playing for money to be her one absorbing interest in life. As she thought of the Polish woman Sylvia felt sorry that she and her friend were in different _pensions_. It would have been so nice to have had her here, in the Villa du Lac. She felt rather lost without Anna, for she had become accustomed to the other's pleasant, stimulating companionship. M. Polperro had said that dinner was at half-past seven. Sylvia got up from her chair by the window. She moved back into the room and put on a pretty white lace evening dress which she had not worn since she had been in France. It would have been absurd to have appeared in such a gown in the little dining-room of the Hotel de l'Horloge, which opened into the street; but the Villa du Lac was quite different. As she saw herself reflected in one of the long mirrors let into the wall, Sylvia blushed and half-smiled. She had suddenly remembered the young man who had behaved, on that first visit of hers to the Villa du Lac, so much more discreetly than had all the other Frenchmen with whom she had been brought in temporary contact. She was familiar, through newspaper paragraphs, with the name of his brother-in-law, the French duke who had won the Derby. The Duc d'Eglemont, that was the racing French duke who had carried off the blue riband of the British Turf--the other name was harder to remember--then it came to her. Count Paul de Virieu. How kind and courteous he had been to her and her friend in the Club. She remembered him very vividly. Yes, though not exactly good-looking, he had fine eyes, and a clever, if not a very happy, face. And then, on going down the broad, shallow staircase, and so through the large, oval hall into the dining-room, Sylvia Bailey saw that the man of whom she had been thinking was there, sitting very near to where she herself was now told that she was to sit. 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. But all she did was to nod gravely, and the Count, sitting down, took no further apparent notice of her.