“No,” Sylvia looked up surprised.  “I’m sorry to say that there is still no news of her, but, of course, there will be soon.”

She was astonished that the Wachners should have mentioned the matter to this disagreeable, inquisitive person.

“The lady stopped here on her way to the station.  She seemed in very high spirits.”

“Oh, no, you are quite mistaken,” said Sylvia quickly.  “Madame Wolsky did not come here at all the day she left Lacville.  She was expected, both to tea and to supper, but she did not arrive—­”

“Indeed, yes, Madame!  I had to come back that afternoon, for I had forgotten to bring in some sugar.  The lady was here then, and she was still here when I left the house.”

“I assure you that this cannot have been on the day my friend left Lacville,” said Mrs. Bailey quickly.  “Madame Wolsky left on a Saturday afternoon.  As I told you just now, Madame Wachner expected her to supper, but she never came.  She went to Paris instead.”

The servant looked at her fixedly, and Sylvia’s face became what it seldom was—­very forbidding in expression.  She wished this meddling, familiar woman would go away and leave her alone.

“No doubt Madame knows best!  One day is like another to me.  I beg Madame’s pardon.”

The Frenchwoman took up her parasol and laid the house key on the table, then, with a “Bon jour, Madame, et encore merci bien!” she noisily closed the door behind her.

A moment later, Sylvia, with a sense of relief, found herself in sole possession of the Chalet des Muguets.

* * * * *

Even the quietest, the most commonplace house has, as it were, an individuality that sets it apart from other houses.  And even those who would deny that proposition must admit that every inhabited dwelling has its own special nationality.

The Chalet des Muguets was typically French and typically suburban; but where it differed from thousands of houses of the same type, dotted round in the countrysides within easy reach of Paris, was that it was let each year to a different set of tenants.

In Sylvia Bailey’s eyes the queer little place lacked all the elements which go to make a home; and, sitting there, in that airless, darkened dining-room, she wondered, not for the first time, why the Wachners chose to live in such a comfortless way.

She glanced round her with distaste.  Everything was not only cheap, but common and tawdry.  Still, the dining-room, like all the other rooms in the chalet, was singularly clean, and almost oppressively neat.

There was the round table at which she and Anna Wolsky had been so kindly entertained, the ugly buffet or sideboard, and in place of the dull parquet floor she remembered on her first visit lay an ugly piece of linoleum, of which the pattern printed on the surface simulated a red and blue marble pavement.

Once more the change puzzled her, perhaps unreasonably.