Telling his courteous landlord that he would not be in to luncheon, Chester left the house, and as it was still far too early to seek out Sylvia, he struck out, with the aid of the little pocket-map of the environs of Paris with which he had been careful to provide himself, towards the open country.
And as he swung quickly along, feeling once more tired and depressed, the Englishman wondered more and more why Sylvia Bailey cared to stay in such a place as Lacville. It struck him as neither town nor country—more like an unfinished suburb than anything else, with almost every piece of spare land up for sale.
He walked on and on till at last he came to the edge of a great stretch of what looked like primeval woodland. This surely must be part of the famous Forest of Montmorency, which his guide-book mentioned as being the great attraction of Lacville? He wondered cynically whether Sylvia had ever been so far, and then he plunged into the wood, along one of the ordered alleys which to his English eyes looked so little forest-like, and yet which made walking there very pleasant.
Suddenly there fell on his ear the sound of horses trotting quickly. He looked round, and some hundred yards or so to his right, at a place where four roads met under high arching trees, he saw two riders, a man and a woman, pass by. They had checked their horses to a walk, and as their voices floated over to him, the woman's voice seemed extraordinarily, almost absurdly, familiar—in fact, he could have sworn it was Sylvia Bailey's voice.
Chester stopped in his walk and shrugged his shoulders impatiently. She must indeed be dwelling in his thoughts if he thus involuntarily evoked her presence where she could by no stretch of possibility be.
But that wandering echo brought Sylvia Bailey very near to Chester, and once more he recalled her as he had seen her sitting at the gambling table the night before.
In grotesque juxtaposition he remembered, together with that picture of Sylvia as he had seen her last night, the case of a respectable old lady, named Mrs. Meeks, the widow of a clergyman who had had a living in the vicinity of Market Dalling.
Not long after her husband's death this old lady—she had about three hundred a year, and Chester had charge of her money matters—went abroad for a few weeks to Mentone. Those few weeks had turned Mrs. Meeks into a confirmed gambler. She now lived entirely at Monte Carlo in one small room.
He could not help remembering now the kind of remarks that were made by the more prosperous inhabitants of Market Dalling, his fellow citizens, when they went off for a short holiday to the South, in January or February. They would see this poor lady, this Mrs. Meeks, wandering round the gaming tables, and the sight would amuse and shock them. Chester knew that one of the first things said to him after the return of such people would be, "Who d'you think I saw at Monte Carlo? Why, Mrs. Meeks, of course! It's enough to make her husband turn in his grave."
And now he told himself ruefully that it would be enough to make honest George Bailey turn in his grave could he see his pretty, sheltered Sylvia sitting in the Casino at Lacville, surrounded by the riffraff collected there last night, and actually taking an active part in the game as well as risking her money with business-like intentness.