She stepped out of the house, and put up her white parasol.
It was still dreadfully hot, but to the left, across the lawn, lay the cool depths of the chestnut wood. Why not go over there and rest in the shade?
Hurrying across the scorched grass to the place where there was an opening in the rough hedge, she found herself, a moment later, plunged in the grateful green twilight created by high trees.
It was delightfully quiet and still in the wood, and Sylvia wondered vaguely why the Wachners never took their tea out there. But foreigners are very law-abiding, or so she supposed, and the wood, if a piece of no-man's land, was for sale. Up a path she could see the back of a large board.
It was clear that this pretty bit of woodland would have been turned into villa plots long ago had it been nearer to a road. But it was still a stretch of primeval forest. Here and there, amid the tufts of grass, lay the husks of last autumn's chestnuts.
Sylvia slowly followed the little zigzag way which cut across the wood, and then, desiring to sit down for awhile, she struck off to the right, towards a spot where she saw that the brambles and the undergrowth had been cleared away.
Even here, where in summer the sun never penetrated, the tufts of coarse grass were dried up by the heat. She glanced down; no, there was no fear that the hard, dry ground would stain her pretty cotton frock.
And then, as she sat there, Sylvia gradually became aware that close to her, where the undergrowth began again, the earth had recently been disturbed. Over an irregular patch of about a yard square the sods had been dug up, and then planted again.
The thought passed through her mind that children must have been playing there, and that they had made a rude attempt to destroy their handiwork, or rather to prevent its being noticed, by placing the branch of a tree across the little plot of ground where the earth had been disturbed. It was this broken branch, of which the leaves had shrivelled up, that had first drawn her attention to the fact that someone must have been there, and recently.
Her thoughts wandered off to Bill Chester. He was now actually journeying towards her as fast as boat and train could bring him; in a couple of hours he would be in Paris, and then, perhaps, he would come out to Lacville in time for dinner.