Sylvia moved away from the window, but she was in no mood to go back to bed.  She felt restless, excited, sorry that she had given up her ride.

When at last her tea was brought in, she saw the Count’s card lying on the tray: 

  Madame—­

  I regret very much to hear that you are not well—­so ran his pencilled
  words—­but I trust you will be able to come down this morning, for I
  have a message to give you from my sister.

  Believe me, Madame, of all your servants the most devoted.

  Paul de Virieu.

They met in the garden—­the garden which they had so often had to themselves during their short happy mornings; and, guided by an instinctive longing for solitude, and for being out of sight and out of mind of those about them, they made their way towards the arch in the wall which led to the potager.

It was just ten o’clock, and the gardeners were leaving off work for an hour; they had earned their rest, for their work begins each summer day at sunrise.  It was therefore through a sweet-smelling, solitary wilderness that Count Paul guided his companion.

They walked along the narrow paths edged with fragrant herbs till they came to the extreme end of the kitchen-garden, and then—­

“Shall we go into the orangery?” he asked abruptly.

Sylvia nodded.  These were the first words he had uttered since his short “Good morning.  I hope, Madame, you are feeling better?”

He stepped aside to allow her to go first into the large, finely-proportioned building, which was so charming a survival of eighteenth-century taste.  The orangery was cool, fragrant, deserted; remote indeed from all that Lacville stands for in this ugly, utilitarian world.

“Won’t you sit down?” he said slowly.  And then, as if echoing his companion’s thoughts, “It seems a long, long time since we were first in the orangery, Madame—­”

“—­When you asked me so earnestly to leave Lacville,” said Sylvia, trying to speak lightly.  She sat down on the circular stone seat, and, as he had done on that remembered morning when they were still strangers, he took his place at the other end of it.

“Well?” he said, looking at her fixedly.  “Well, you see I came back after all!”

Sylvia made no answer.

“I ought not to have done so.  It was weak of me.”  He did not look at her as he spoke; he was tracing imaginary patterns on the stone floor.

“I came back,” he concluded, in a low, bitter tone, “because I could not stay any longer away from you.”

And still Sylvia remained silent.

“Do you not believe that?” he asked, rather roughly.

And then at last she looked up and spoke.

“I think you imagine that to be the case,” she said, “but I am sure that it is not I, alone, who brought you back to Lacville.”

“And yet it is you—­you alone!” he exclaimed and he jumped up and came and stood before her.