Paul de Virieu turned in the kindly darkness, and putting his arm round Sylvia’s slender shoulders, he tenderly drew her to him.

A passion of pity, of protective tenderness, filled his heart, and suddenly lifted him to a higher region than that in which he had hitherto been content to dwell.

“You must not say that, ma cherie,” he whispered, laying his cheek to hers as tenderly as he would have caressed a child, “it would be too cruel to the living, to those who love you—­who adore you.”

Then he raised his head, and, in a very different tone, he exclaimed,

“Do not be afraid, Mr. Chester, those infamous people shall not be allowed to escape!  Poor Madame Wolsky shall surely be avenged.  But Mrs. Bailey will not be asked to make any statement, except in writing—­in what you in England call an affidavit.  You do not realise, although you doubtless know, what our legal procedure is like.  Not even in order to secure the guillotine for Madame Wachner and her Fritz would I expose Mrs. Bailey to the ordeal of our French witness-box.”

“And how will it be possible to avoid it?” asked Chester, in a low voice.

Paul de Virieu hesitated, then, leaning forward and holding Sylvia still more closely and protectively to him, he said very deliberately the fateful words he had never thought to say,

“I have an announcement to make to you, Mr. Chester.  It is one which I trust will bring me your true congratulations.  Mrs. Bailey is about to do me the honour of becoming my wife.”

He waited a moment, then added very gravely, “I am giving her an undertaking, a solemn promise by all I hold most sacred, to abandon play—­”

Chester felt a shock of amazement.  How utterly mistaken, how blind he had been!  He had felt positively certain that Sylvia had refused Paul de Virieu; and he had been angered by the suspicion, nay, by what he had thought the sure knowledge, that the wise refusal had cost her pain.

But women are extraordinary creatures, and so, for the matter of that, are Frenchmen—­

Still, his feelings to the man sitting opposite to him had undergone a complete change.  He now liked—­nay, he now respected—­Paul de Virieu.  But for the Count, whom he had thought to be nothing more than an effeminate dandy, a hopeless gambler, where would Sylvia be now?  The unspoken answer to this question gave Chester a horrible inward tremor.

He leant forward, and grasped Paul de Virieu’s left hand.

“I do congratulate you,” he said, simply and heartily; “you deserve your great good fortune.”  Then, to Sylvia, he added quietly, “My dear, it is to him you owe your life.”