"Yes, we had better go first to the Villa du Lac, for Mrs. Bailey should be home by now. By the way, Mr. Chester, you had better ask to have my room to-night; we know that it is disengaged. As for me, I will go on somewhere else as soon as I know you have seen our friend. Please do not tell Mrs. Bailey that I came with you. Where would be the use? I may go back to Paris to-night." Paul de Virieu spoke in a constrained, preoccupied voice.
"But aren't you coming in? Won't you stay at Lacville at least till to-morrow?"
Chester's voice unwittingly became far more cordial; if the Frenchman did not wish to see Sylvia, why had he insisted on coming back, too, to Lacville.
The hall of the Villa du Lac was brightly lit up, and as the victoria swept up the short drive to the stone horseshoe stairway, the Comte de Virieu suddenly grasped the other's hand.
"Good luck!" he exclaimed, "Good luck, fortunate man! As the Abbot at my English school used to say to me when he met me, as a little boy, running about the cloisters, 'God bless you!'"
Chester was rather touched, as well as surprised. But what queer, emotional fellows Frenchmen are to be sure! Although Count Paul, as Sylvia used to call him, had evidently been a little bit in love with her himself, he was quite willing to think of her as married to another man!
But—but there was the rub! Chester was no longer so sure that he wanted to marry Sylvia. She had become a different woman—she seemed to be another Sylvia to the one he had always known.
"I'll just come out and tell you that it's all right," he said a little awkwardly. "But I wish you'd come in—if only for a minute. Mrs. Bailey would be so pleased to see you."
"No, no," muttered the other. "Believe me, she would not!"
Chester jumped out of the carriage and ran quickly up the stone steps, and rang the bell.