Sylvia's lip quivered, but she was too proud to appeal to him to stay. Still, she felt horribly hurt.
"You see what I am like," he said, in a low, shamed voice. "I wish you had made me give you my word of honour."
She got up. It was cruel, very cruel, of him to say that to her. How amazingly their relation to one another had altered in the last half-hour!
For the moment they were enemies, and it was the enemy in Sylvia that next spoke. "I think I shall go and have tea with the Wachners. They never go to the Casino on Saturday afternoons."
A heavy cloud came over Count Paul's face.
"I can't think what you see to like in that vulgar old couple," he exclaimed irritably. "To me there is something"—he hesitated, seeking for an English word which should exactly express the French word "louche"—"sinister—that is the word I am looking for—there is to me something sinister about the Wachners."
"Sinister?" echoed Sylvia, really surprised. "Why, they seem to me to be the most good-natured, commonplace people in the world, and then they're so fond of one another!"
"I grant you that," he said. "I quite agree that that ugly old woman is very fond of her 'Ami Fritz'—but I do not know if he returns the compliment!"
Sylvia looked pained, nay more, shocked.
"I suppose French husbands only like their wives when they are young and pretty," she said slowly.