“I would much rather come downstairs to breakfast,” said Sylvia; “but I do not want anything yet, M. Polperro.  It will do quite well if I have breakfast at half-past eight or nine.”

She unpacked her trunks, and as she put her things away it suddenly struck her that she meant to stay at Lacville for some time.  It was an interesting, a new, even a striking experience, this of hers; and though she felt rather lost without Anna Wolsky’s constant presence and companionship, she was beginning to find it pleasant to be once more her own mistress.

She sat down and wrote some letters—­the sort of letters that can be written or not as the writer feels inclined.  Among them was a duty letter to her trustee, Bill Chester, telling him of her change of address, and of her change of plan.

The people with whom she had been going to Switzerland were friends of Bill Chester too, and so it was doubtful now whether he would go abroad at all.

And all the time Sylvia was writing there was at the back of her mind a curious, unacknowledged feeling that she was waiting for something to happen, that there was something pleasant for her to look forward to....

And when at last she went down into the dining-room, and Paul de Virieu came in, Sylvia suddenly realised, with a sense of curious embarrassment, what it was she had been waiting for and looking forward to.  It was her meeting with the Comte de Virieu.

“I hope my going out so early did not disturb you,” he said, in his excellent English.  “I saw you at your window.”

Sylvia shook her head, smiling.

“I had already been awake for at least half an hour,” she answered.

“I suppose you ride?  Most of the Englishwomen I knew as a boy rode, and rode well.”

“My father was very anxious I should ride, and as a child I was well taught, but I have not had much opportunity of riding since I grew up.”

Sylvia reddened faintly, for she fully expected the Count to ask her if she would ride with him, and she had already made up her mind to say “No,” though to say “Yes” would be very pleasant!

But he did nothing of the sort.  Even at this early hour of their acquaintance it struck Sylvia how unlike the Comte de Virieu’s manner to her was to that of the other young men she knew.  While his manner was deferential, even eager, yet there was not a trace of flirtation in it.  Also the Count had already altered all Sylvia Bailey’s preconceived notions of Frenchmen.

Sylvia had supposed a Frenchman’s manner to a woman to be almost invariably familiar, in fact, offensively familiar.  She had had the notion that a pretty young woman—­it would, of course, have been absurd for her to have denied, even to herself, that she was very pretty—­must be careful in her dealing with foreigners, and she believed it to be a fact that a Frenchman always makes love to an attractive stranger, even on the shortest acquaintance!