Madame Wachner stared significantly at Sylvia.  “You do not know what the police of Lacville are like, my dear friend.  They are very unpleasant people.  As you were Anna’s only friend in the place, they might give you considerable trouble.  They would ask you where to look for her, and they would torment you incessantly.  If I were you I would say as little as possible.”

Madame Wachner spoke very quickly, almost breathlessly, and Sylvia felt vaguely uncomfortable.  There was, of course, only one person to whom she was likely to mention the fact, and that was Paul de Virieu.

Was it possible that Madame Wachner wished to warn her against telling him of a fact which he was sure to discover for himself in the course of a day or two?

CHAPTER XV

As Sylvia drove away alone from the station, she felt exceedingly troubled and unhappy.

It was all very well for Madame Wachner to take the matter of Anna Wolsky’s disappearance from Lacville so philosophically.  The Wachners’ acquaintance with Madame Wolsky had been really very slight, and they naturally knew nothing of the Polish woman’s inner nature and temperament.

Sylvia told herself that Anna must have been in great trouble, and that something very serious must have happened to her, before she could have gone away like this, without saying anything about it.

If poor Anna had changed her mind, and gone to the Casino the day before, she might, of course, have lost all her winnings and more.  Sylvia reminded herself that it stood to reason that if one could make hundreds of pounds in an hour or two, then one might equally lose hundreds of pounds in the same time.  But somehow she could hardly believe that her friend had been so foolish.

Still, how else to account for Anna’s disappearance, her sudden exit from Lacville?  Anna Wolsky was a proud woman, and Sylvia suspected that if she had come unexpectedly to the end of her resources, she would have preferred to go away rather than confide her trouble to a new friend.

Tears slowly filled Sylvia Bailey’s blue eyes.  She felt deeply hurt by Anna’s strange conduct.

Madame Wachner’s warning as to saying as little as possible of the other’s departure from Lacville had made very little impression on Sylvia, yet it so far affected her that, instead of telling Monsieur Polperro of the fact the moment she was back at the Villa du Lac, she went straight up to her own room.  But when there she found that she could settle down to nothing—­neither to a book nor to letters.

Since her husband’s death Sylvia Bailey’s social circle had become much larger, and there were a number of people who enjoyed inviting and meeting the pretty, wealthy young widow.  But just now all these friends of hers in far-away England seemed quite unreal and, above all, quite uninteresting.