Moreover, she had received that morning a letter which had greatly disturbed her.  It now lay open on her lap, for she had just read it through again.  This letter was quite short, and simply contained the news that Bill Chester, her good friend, sometime lover, and trustee, was going to Switzerland after all, and that he would stop a couple of days in Paris in order to see her.

It was really very nice of Bill to do this, and a month ago Sylvia would have looked forward to seeing him.  But now everything was changed, and Sylvia could well have dispensed with Bill Chester’s presence.

The thought of Chester at Lacville filled her with unease.  When she had left her English home two months ago—­it seemed more like two years than two months—­she had felt well disposed to the young lawyer, and deep in her inmost heart she had almost brought herself to acknowledge that she might very probably in time become his wife.

She suspected that Chester had been fond of her when she was a girl, at a time when his means would not have justified him in proposing to her, for he was one of those unusual men who think it dishonourable to ask girls to marry them unless they are in a position to keep a wife.  She remembered how he had looked—­how set and stern his face had become when someone had suddenly told him in her presence of her engagement to George Bailey, the middle-aged man who had been so kind to her, and yet who had counted for so little in her life, though she had given him all she could of love and duty.

Since her widowhood, so she now reminded herself remorsefully, Chester had been extraordinarily good to her, and his devotion had touched her because it was expressed in actions rather than in words, for he was also the unusual type of man, seldom a romantic type, who scorns, however much in love, to take advantage of a fiduciary position to strengthen his own.

The fact that he was her trustee brought them into frequent conflict.  Too often Bill was the candid friend instead of the devoted lover.  Their only real quarrel—­if quarrel it could be called—­had been, as we know, over the purchase of her string of pearls.  But time, or so Sylvia confidently believed, had proved her to have been right, for her “investment,” as she always called it to Bill Chester, had improved in value.

But though she had been right in that comparatively trifling matter, she knew that Chester would certainly disapprove of the kind of life—­the idle, purposeless, frivolous life—­she was now leading.

Looking out over the lake, which, as it was an exceedingly hot, fine day, was already crowded with boats, Sylvia almost made up her mind to go back into Paris for two or three days.

Bill would think it a very strange thing that she was staying here in Lacville all by herself.  But the thought of leaving Lacville just now was very disagreeable to Sylvia....  She wondered uncomfortably what her trustee would think of her friendship with Count Paul de Virieu—­with this Frenchman who, when he was not gambling at the Casino, spent every moment of his time with her.