When, a little breathless, she joined him in the garden, she found that he had already taken two rocking-chairs into a shady corner which was out of sight of the white villa and of its inquisitive windows.

“Something very serious has happened,” said Count Paul slowly.

He took both her hands in his and looked down into her face.  With surprise and concern she saw that his eyelids were red.  Was it possible that Count Paul had been crying?  He almost looked as if he had.

The idea of a grown-up man allowing himself to give way to emotion of that sort would have seemed absurd to Sylvia a short time ago, but somehow the thought that Paul de Virieu had shed tears made her feel extraordinarily moved.

“What is the matter?” she asked anxiously.  “Has anything happened to your sister?”

“Thank God—­no!” he answered hastily.  “But something else, something which was to be expected, but which I did not expect, has happened—­”

And then, very gravely, and at last releasing her hands, he added, “My kind godmother, the little Marquise you met last week, died last night.”

Sylvia felt the sudden sense of surprise, almost of discomfiture, the young always feel in the neighbourhood of death.

“How dreadful!  She seemed quite well when we saw her that day—­”

She could still hear echoing in her ears the old lady’s half-mocking but kindly compliments.

“Ah! but she was very, very old—­over ninety!  Why, she was supposed to be aged when she became my godmother thirty odd years ago!”

He waited a moment, and then added, quietly, “She has left me in her will two hundred thousand francs.”

“Oh, I am glad!”

Sylvia stretched out both hands impulsively, and the Comte de Virieu took first one and then the other and raised them to his lips.

“Eight thousand pounds?  Does it seem a fortune to you, Madame?”

“Of course it does!” exclaimed Sylvia.

“It frees me from the necessity of being a pensioner on my brother-in-law,” he said slowly, and Sylvia felt a little chill of disappointment.  Was that his only pleasure in his legacy?

“You will not play with this money?” she said, in a low voice.

“It is no use my making a promise, especially to you, that I might not be able to keep—­”

He got up, and stood looking down at her.

“But I promise that I will not waste or risk this money if I can resist the temptation to do so.”

Sylvia smiled, though she felt more inclined to cry.

He seemed stung by her look.

“Do you wish me to give you my word of honour that I will not risk any of this money at the tables?” he asked, almost in a whisper.

Sylvia’s heart began to beat.  Count Paul had become very pale.  There was a curious expression on his face—­an expression of revolt, almost of anger.

“Do you exact it?” he repeated, almost violently.