After they had finished dinner most of M. Polperro’s guests streamed out into the garden; and there coffee was served to them on little round iron tables dotted about on the broad green lawn and sanded paths.

One or two of the ladies spoke a kindly word to Sylvia as they passed by her, but each had a friend or friends, and she was once more feeling lonely and deserted when suddenly Count Paul de Virieu walked across to where she was sitting by herself.

Again he clicked his heels together, and again he bowed low.  But already Sylvia was getting used to these strange foreign ways, and she no longer felt inclined to laugh; in fact, she rather liked the young Frenchman’s grave, respectful manner.

“If, as I suppose, Madame, seeing that you have come back to Lacville—­”

Sylvia looked up with surprise painted on her fair face, for the Count was speaking in English, and it was extremely good, almost perfect English.

“—­and you wish to join the Club at the Casino, I hope, Madame, that you will allow me to have the honour of proposing you as a member.”

He waited a moment, and then went on:  “It is far better for a lady to be introduced by someone who is already a member, than for the affair to be managed”—­he slightly lowered his voice—­“by an hotel keeper.  I am well known to the Casino authorities.  I have been a member of the Club for some time—­”

He stood still gazing thoughtfully down into her face.

“But I am not yet sure that I shall join the Club,” said Sylvia, hesitatingly.

He looked—­was it relieved or sorry?

“I beg your pardon, Madame!  I misunderstood.  I thought you told M. Polperro just now in the dining-room that you were going to the Casino this evening.”

Sylvia felt somewhat surprised.  It was odd that he should have overheard her words to M. Polperro, amid all the chatter of their fellow-guests.

“Yes, I am going to the Casino,” she said frankly, “but only to meet a friend of mine there, the lady with whom I was the other day when you so kindly interfered to save us, or rather to save me, from being ignominiously turned out of the Club.”  And then she added, a little shyly, “Won’t you sit down?”

Again the Comte de Virieu bowed low before her, and then he sat down.

“I fear you will not be allowed to go into the Club this time unless you become a member.  They have to be very strict in these matters; to allow a stranger in the Club at all is a legal infraction.  The Casino authorities might be fined for doing so.”

“How well you speak English!” exclaimed Sylvia, abruptly and irrelevantly.

“I was at school in England,” he said, simply, “at a Catholic College called Beaumont, near Windsor; but now I do not go there as often as I should like to do.”

And then, scarcely knowing how it came about, Sylvia fell into easy, desultory, almost intimate talk with this entire stranger.  But there was something very agreeable in his simple serious manners.