"I have had no luck!" he shook his head angrily. "It is all the fault of that cursed system! If I had only begun at the right, the propitious moment—as I should have done if you had not worried me and asked me to go away—I should probably have made a great deal of money," he looked at her disconsolately, deprecatingly.
Chester also looked at Madame Wachner. He admired the wife's self-restraint. Her red face got a little redder. That was all.
"It cannot be helped," she said a trifle coldly, and in French. "I knew how it would be, so I am not disappointed. Have you anything left? Have you got the five louis I gave you at the beginning of the evening?"
Monsieur Wachner shook his head gloomily.
"Well then, it is about time we went home." She turned and led the way out.
CHAPTER XXIII
As Sylvia went slowly and wearily up to her room a sudden horror of Lacville swept over her excited brain.
For the first time since she had been in the Villa du Lac, she locked the door of her bed-room and sat down in the darkness.
She was overwhelmed with feelings of humiliation and pain. She told herself with bitter self-scorn that Paul de Virieu cared nothing for her. If he had cared ever so little he surely would never have done what he had done to-night?