What could these odd words mean?  At what was Madame Wachner working?

A sudden feeling of discomfort came over Sylvia.  Then the stout, jolly-looking woman was not without private anxieties and cares?  There had been something so weary as well as so angry in the tone in which Madame Wachner spoke to her beloved “Ami Fritz.”

A moment later he was hurrying towards the gate.

“Sophie,” he cried out from the garden, “the carriage is here!  Come along—­we have wasted too much time already—­”

Like Anna Wolsky, Monsieur Wachner grudged every moment spent away from the tables.

Madame Wachner hurried her two guests into her bed-room to put on their hats.

Anna Wolsky walked over to the window.

“What a strange, lonely place to live in!” she said, and drew the lace shawl she was wearing a little more closely about her thin shoulders.  “And that wood over there—­I should be afraid to live so near a wood!  I should think that there might be queer people concealed there.”

“Bah!  Why should we be frightened, even if there were queer people there!”

“Well, but sometimes you must have a good deal of money in this house.”

Madame Wachner laughed.

“When we have so much money that we cannot carry it about, and that, alas! is not very often—­but still, when Fritz makes a big win, we go into Paris and bank the money.”

“I do not trouble to do that,” said Anna, “for I always carry all my money about with me.  What do you do?” she turned to Sylvia Bailey.

“I leave it in my trunk at the hotel,” said Sylvia.  “The servants at the Villa du Lac seem to be perfectly honest—­in fact they are mostly related to the proprietor, M. Polperro.”

“Oh, but that is quite wrong!” exclaimed Madame Wachner, eagerly.  “You should never leave your money in the hotel; you should always carry it about with you—­in little bags like this.  See!”

Again she suddenly lifted the light alpaca skirt she was wearing, as she had done before, in this very room, on the occasion of Sylvia’s first visit to the Chalet.  “That is the way to carry money in a place like this!” she said, smiling.  “But now hurry, or all our evening will be gone!”

They left the house, and hastened down the garden to the gate, where L’Ami Fritz received his wife with a grumbling complaint that they had been so long.

And he was right, for the Casino was very full.  Sylvia made no attempt to play.  Somehow she did not care for the Club when Count Paul was not there.

She was glad when she was at last able to leave the others for the Villa du Lac.

Anna Wolsky accompanied her friend to the entrance of the Casino.  The Comte de Virieu was just coming in as Sylvia went out; bowing distantly to the two ladies, he hurried through the vestibule towards the Club.

Sylvia’s heart sank.  Not even after spending a day with his beloved sister could he resist the lure of play!