The other woman—­Anna Wolsky was some years older than Sylvia Bailey—­smiled indulgently.

“Tiens!” she cried suddenly, “what have you got there?” and she took the pink card out of Sylvia’s hand.

“Madame Cagliostra?” she repeated, musingly.  “Now where did I hear that name?  Yes, of course it was from our chambermaid!  Cagliostra is a friend of hers, and, according to her, a marvellous person—­one from whom the devil keeps no secrets!  She charges only five francs for a consultation, and it appears that all sorts of well-known people go to her, even those whom the Parisians call the Gratin, that is, the Upper Crust, from the Champs Elysees and the Faubourg St. Germain!”

“I don’t think much of fortune-tellers,” said Sylvia, thoughtfully.  “I went to one last time I was in London and he really didn’t tell me anything of the slightest interest.”

Her conscience pricked her a little as she said this, for “Pharaoh” had certainly predicted a journey which she had then no intention of taking, and a meeting with a foreign woman.  Yet here she was in Paris, and here was the foreign woman standing close to her!

Nay more, Anna Wolsky had become—­it was really rather odd that it should be so—­the first intimate friend of her own sex Sylvia had made since she was a grown-up woman.

“I do believe in fortune-tellers,” said Madame Wolsky deliberately, “and that being so I shall spend my afternoon in going up to Montmartre, to the Rue Jolie, to hear what this Cagliostra has to say.  It will be what you in England call ‘a lark’!  And I do not see why I should not give myself so cheap a lark as a five-franc lark!”

“Oh, if you really mean to go, I think I will go too!” cried Sylvia, gaily.

She was beginning to feel less tired, and the thought of a long lonely afternoon spent indoors and by herself lacked attraction.

Linking her arm through her friend’s, she went downstairs and into the barely furnished dining-room, which was so very unlike an English hotel dining-room.  In this dining-room the wallpaper simulated a vine-covered trellis, from out of which peeped blue-plumaged birds, and on each little table, covered by an unbleached table-cloth, stood an oil and vinegar cruet and a half-bottle of wine.

The Hotel de l’Horloge was a typical French hotel, and foreigners very seldom stayed there.  Sylvia had been told of the place by the old French lady who had been her governess, and who had taught her to speak French exceptionally well.

Several quiet Frenchmen, who had offices in the neighbourhood, were “en pension” at the Hotel de l’Horloge, and as the two friends came in many were the steady, speculative glances cast in their direction.

To the average Frenchman every woman is interesting; for every Frenchman is in love with love, and in each fair stranger he sees the possible heroine of a romance in which he may play the agreeable part of hero.  So it was that Sylvia Bailey and Anna Wolsky both had their silent admirers among those who lunched and dined in the narrow green and white dining-room of the Hotel de l’Horloge.