The Duc d’Eglemont ignored the fact that France was a Republic; he still talked of “the King,” and went periodically into waiting on the Duke of Orleans.

Count Paul also told Sylvia of his great-uncle and godfather, the Cardinal, who lived in Italy, and who had—­or so his family liked to believe—­so nearly become Pope.

Then there were his three old maiden great-aunts, who had all desired to be nuns, but who apparently had not had the courage to do so when it came to the point.  They dwelt together in a remote Burgundian chateau, and they each spent an hour daily in their chapel praying that their dear nephew Paul might be rescued from the evils of play.

And as Paul de Virieu told Sylvia Bailey of all these curious old-world folk of his, Sylvia wondered more and more why he led the kind of existence he was leading now.

* * * * *

For the first time since Sylvia had come to Lacville, neither she nor Count Paul spent any part of that afternoon at the Casino.  They were both at that happy stage of—­shall we say friendship?—­when a man and a woman cannot see too much of one another; when time is as if it were not; when nothing said or done can be wrong in the other’s sight; when Love is still a soft and an invisible presence, with naught about him of the exacting tyrant he will so soon become.

Count Paul postponed his departure for Paris till after dinner, and not till she went up to dress did Sylvia sit down to write her answer to the Duchesse d’Eglemont.

For a long while she held her pen in her hand.  How was she to address Paul de Virieu’s sister?  Must she call her “Dear Madame”?  Should she call her “Dear Duchesse”?  It was really an unimportant matter, but it appeared very important to Sylvia Bailey.  She was exceedingly anxious not to commit any social solecism.

And then, while she was still hesitating, still sitting with the pen poised in her hand, there came a knock at the door.

The maid handed her a note; it was from Count Paul, the first letter he had ever written to her.

“Madame,”—­so ran the note—­“it occurs to me that you might like to answer my sister in French, and so I venture to send you the sort of letter that you might perhaps care to write.  Each country has its own usages in these matters—­that must be my excuse for my apparent impertinence.”

And then there followed a prettily-turned little epistle which Sylvia copied, feeling perhaps a deeper gratitude than a far greater service would have won him from her.

CHAPTER XII

A couple of hours later Sylvia and Count Paul parted at the door of the Casino.  He held her hand longer than was usual with him when bidding her good-night; then, dropping it, he lifted his hat and hurried off towards the station.

Sylvia stood in the dusk and looked after him till a turn in the short road hid his hurrying figure from her sight.