Proudly mine host led Mrs. Bailey up the wide staircase into the spacious, airy room which had been prepared for her.  “This was the bed-chamber of Madame la Comtesse de Para, the friend of the Empress Eugenie” he said.

The windows of the large, circular room, mirror-lined, and still containing the fantastic, rather showy decorations which dated from the Second Empire, overlooked the broad waters of the lake.  Even now, though it was still daylight, certain romantic-natured couples had lit paper lanterns and hung them at the prows of their little sailing-boats.

The scene had a certain fairy-like beauty and stillness.

“Madame will find the Villa du Lac far more lively now” exclaimed M. Polperro cheerfully.  “Last week I had only M. le Comte Paul de Virieu—­no doubt Madame has heard of his brother-in-law, the Duc d’Eglemont?”

Sylvia smiled.  “Yes, he won the Derby, a famous English race,” she said; and then, simply because the landlord’s love of talking was infectious, “And does the Count own horses, too?” she asked.

“Oh, no, Madame.  He loves them, yes, and he is a fine horseman, but Count Paul, alas! has other things that interest and occupy him more than horses!”

After M. Polperro had bowed himself out, Sylvia sat down close to one of the open windows and looked out over the enchanting, and to her English eyes, unusual panorama spread out before her.

Yes, she had done well to come here, to a place of which, no doubt, many of her English friends would have thoroughly disapproved!  But, after all, what was wrong about Lacville?  Where, for the matter of that, was the harm of playing for money if one could afford to lose it?

Sylvia had hardly ever met so kind or so intelligent a woman as was her new friend, Anna Wolsky:  and Anna—­she made no secret of it at all—­allowed playing for money to be her one absorbing interest in life.

As she thought of the Polish woman Sylvia felt sorry that she and her friend were in different pensions.  It would have been so nice to have had her here, in the Villa du Lac.  She felt rather lost without Anna, for she had become accustomed to the other’s pleasant, stimulating companionship.

M. Polperro had said that dinner was at half-past seven.  Sylvia got up from her chair by the window.  She moved back into the room and put on a pretty white lace evening dress which she had not worn since she had been in France.

It would have been absurd to have appeared in such a gown in the little dining-room of the Hotel de l’Horloge, which opened into the street; but the Villa du Lac was quite different.