This morning, and she was a little piqued that it was so, Sylvia had to admit to herself that the Comte de Virieu treated her much as he might have done some old lady in whom he took a respectful interest....

And yet twice during the half-hour her breakfast lasted she looked up to see his blue eyes fixed full on her with an earnest, inquiring gaze, and she realised that it was not at all the kind of gaze Paul de Virieu would have turned on an old lady.

They got up from their respective tables at the same moment.  He opened the door for her, and then, after a few minutes, followed her out into the garden.

“Have you yet visited the potager?” he asked, deferentially.

Sylvia looked at him, puzzled. “Potager” was quite a new French word to her.

“I think you call it the kitchen-garden.”  A smile lit up his face.  “The people who built the Villa du Lac a matter of fifty years ago were very fond of gardening.  I think it might amuse you to see the potager.  Allow me to show it you.”

They were now walking side by side.  It was a delicious day, and the dew still glistened on the grass and leaves.  Sylvia thought it would be very pleasant, and also instructive, to see a French kitchen-garden.

“Strange to say when I was a child I was often at the Villa du Lac, for the then owner was a distant cousin of my mother.  He and his kind wife allowed me to come here for my convalescence after a rather serious illness when I was ten years old.  My dear mother did not like me to be far from Paris, so I was sent to Lacville.”

“What a curious place to send a child to!” exclaimed Sylvia.

“Ah, but Lacville was extremely different from what it is now, Madame.  True, there was the lake, where Parisians used to come out each Sunday afternoon to fish and boat in a humble way, and there were a few villas built round the lake.  But you must remember that in those prehistoric days there was no Casino!  It is the Casino which has transformed Lacville into what we now see.”

“Then we have reason to bless the Casino!” cried Sylvia, gaily.

They had now left behind them the wide lawn immediately behind the Villa du Lac, and were walking by a long, high wall.  The Count pushed open a narrow door set in an arch in the wall, and Sylvia walked through into one of the largest and most delightful kitchen-gardens she had ever seen.

It was brilliant with colour and scent; the more homely summer flowers filled the borders, while, at each place where four paths met, a round, stone-rimmed basin, filled with water to the brim, gave a sense of pleasant coolness.

The farther end of the walled garden was bounded by a stone orangery, a building dating from the eighteenth century, and full of the stately grace of a vanished epoch.

“What a delightful place!” Sylvia exclaimed.  “But this garden must cost M. Polperro a great deal of money to keep up—­”