amiliar, in fact, offensively familiar. She had had the
notion that a pretty young woman--it would, of course, have been absurd
for her to have denied, even to herself, that she was very pretty--must
be careful in her dealing with foreigners, and she believed it to be a
fact that a Frenchman always makes love to an attractive stranger, even
on the shortest acquaintance!

This morning, and she was a little piqued that it was so, Sylvia had to
admit to herself that the Comte de Virieu treated her much as he might
have done some old lady in whom he took a respectful interest....

And yet twice during the half-hour her breakfast lasted she looked up to
see his blue eyes fixed full on her with an earnest, inquiring gaze, and
she realised that it was not at all the kind of gaze Paul de Virieu would
have turned on an old lady.

They got up from their respective tables at the same moment. He opened
the door for her, and then, after a few minutes, followed her out into
the garden.

"Have you yet visited the _potager_?" he asked, deferentially.

Sylvia looked at him, puzzled. "_Potager_" was quite a new French word to
her.

"I think you call it the kitchen-garden." A smile lit up his face. "The
people who built the Villa du Lac a matter of fifty years ago were very
fond of gardening. I think it might amuse you to see the _potager_. Allow
me to show it you."

They were now walking side by side. It was a delicious day, and the dew
still glistened on the grass and leaves. Sylvia thought it would be very
pleasant, and also instructive, to see a French kitchen-garden.

"Strange to say when I was a child I was often at the Villa du Lac, for
the then owner was a distant cousin of my mother. He and his kind wife
allowed me to come here for my convalescence after a rather serious
illness when I was ten years old. My dear mother did not like me to be
far from Paris, so I was sent to Lacville."

"What a curious place to send a child to!" exclaimed Sylvia.

"Ah, but Lacville was extremely different from what it is now, Madame.
True, there was the lake, where Parisians used to come out each Sunday
afternoon to fish and boat in a humble way, and there were a few villas
built round the lake. But you must remember that in those prehistoric
days there was no Casino! It is the Casino which has transformed Lacville
into what we now see."

"Then we have reason to bless the Casino!" cried Sylvia, gaily.

They had now left behind them th