Suddenly Madame Wachner held out her plate across the table, and L’Ami Fritz heaped it up with the oily salad.

Sylvia Bailey’s plate was empty, but Monsieur Wachner did not seem to notice that his guest lacked anything.  And at last, to her extreme astonishment, she suddenly saw him take up one of the two pieces of meat remaining on the dish, and, leaning across, drop it on his wife’s plate.  Then he helped himself to the last remaining morsel.

It was such a trifling thing really, and due of course to her host’s singular absent-mindedness; yet, even so, taken in connection with both the Wachners’ silence and odd manner, this lack of the commonest courtesy struck Sylvia with a kind of fear—­with fear and with pain.  She felt so hurt that the tears came into her eyes.

There was a long moment’s pause—­then,

“Do you not feel well,” asked Madame Wachner harshly, “or are you grieving for the Comte de Virieu?”

Her voice had become guttural, full of coarse and cruel malice, and even as she spoke she went on eating voraciously.

Sylvia Bailey pushed her chair back, and rose to her feet.

“I should like to go home now,” she said quietly, “for it is getting late,”—­her voice shook a little.  She was desperately afraid of disgracing herself by a childish outburst of tears.  “I can make my way back quite well without Monsieur Wachner’s escort.”

She saw her host shrug his shoulders.  He made a grimace at his wife; it expressed annoyance, nay, more, extreme disapproval.

Madame Wachner also got up.  She wiped her mouth with her napkin, and then laid her hand on Sylvia’s shoulder.

“Come, come,” she exclaimed, and this time she spoke quite kindly, “you must not be cross with me, dear friend!  I was only laughing, I was only what you call in England ‘teasing.’  The truth is I am very vexed and upset that our supper is not better.  I told that fool Frenchwoman to get in something really nice, and she disobeyed me!  I was ’ungry, too, for I ’ad no dejeuner to-day, and that makes one ’ollow, does it not?  But now L’Ami Fritz is going to make us some good coffee!  After we ’ave ’ad it you shall go away if so is your wish, but my ’usband will certainly accompany you—­”

“Most certainly I will do so; you will not move—­no, not a single step—­without me,” said Monsieur Wachner solemnly.

And then Madame Wachner burst out into a sudden peal of laughter—­laughter which was infectious.

Sylvia smiled too, and sat down again.  After all, as Paul de Virieu had truly said, not once, but many times, the Wachners were not refined people—­but they were kind and very good-natured.  And then she, Sylvia, was tired and low-spirited to-night—­no doubt she had imagined the change in their manner, which had so surprised and hurt her.

Madame Wachner was quite her old self again; just now she was engaged in heaping all the cherries which were in the dessert dish on her guest’s plate, in spite of Sylvia’s eager protest.