He took off his hat and remained silent for what seemed to his companion quite a long time.

“By the way, what is Mrs. Bailey doing to-night?” he asked at last.

“To-night?” replied Chester.  “Let me see?  Why, to-night she is spending the evening with those very people—­the Wachners, of whom you were speaking just now.  I heard her arranging it with them this afternoon.”  He added, stiffly, “But I doubt if your impression as to these people is a right one.  They seem to me a very respectable couple.”

Paul de Virieu shrugged his shoulders.  He felt suddenly uneasy—­afraid he hardly knew of what.

There was no risk that Sylvia Bailey would fall a victim to blackmailers—­she had nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to conceal.  But still he hated to think that she was, even now, alone with a man and woman of whom he had formed such a bad impression.

He took his watch out of his pocket.  “There’s a train for Lacville at a quarter to ten,” he said slowly.  “That would be an excellent train for—­for us—­to take—­”

“Then are you thinking of going back to Lacville too?” There was that sarcastic inflection in the Englishman’s voice which the Count had learned to look for and to resent.

“Yes.”

Count Paul looked at Bill Chester significantly, and his look said, “Take care, my friend!  We do not allow a man to sneer at another man in this country unless he is willing to stand certain unpleasant consequences.  Our duels are not always pour rire!”

During the short train journey back to Lacville they hardly spoke.  Each thought that the other was doing a strange and unreasonable thing—­a thing which the thinker could have done much better if left to himself.

At Lacville station they jumped into a victoria.

“I suppose we had better drive straight to the Villa du Lac,” said Chester, hesitatingly.

“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!’”