dly heard her words.

"The lady with whom you first came to Lacville--I mean the Polish
lady--is well known to me by sight. For the last three years I have
seen her at Monte Carlo in the winter, and at Spa and Aix-les-Bains in
the summer. Of course I was not at all surprised to see her turn up here,
but I confess, Madame, that I was very much astonished to see with her
a"--he hesitated a moment--"a young English lady. You would, perhaps, be
offended if I were to tell you exactly what I felt when I saw you at the
Casino!"

"I do not suppose I should be offended," said Sylvia softly.

"I felt, Madame, as if I saw a lily growing in a field of high, rank,
evil-smelling--nay, perhaps I should say, poisonous--weeds."

"But I cannot go away now!" cried Sylvia. She was really impressed--very
uncomfortably impressed--by his earnest words. "It would be most unkind
to my friend, Madame Wolsky. Surely, it is possible to stay at Lacville,
and even to play a little, without anything very terrible happening?" She
looked at him coaxingly, anxiously, as a child might have done.

But Sylvia was not a child; she was a very lovely young woman. Comte Paul
de Virieu's heart began to beat.

But, bah! This was absurd! His day of love and love-making lay far, far
behind him. He rose and walked towards the door.

In speaking to her as he had forced himself to speak, the Frenchman had
done an unselfish and kindly action. Sylvia's gentle and unsophisticated
charm had touched him deeply, and so he had given her what he knew to be
the best possible advice.

"I am not so foolish as to pretend that the people who come and play in
the Casino of Lacville are all confirmed gamblers," he said, slowly. "We
French take our pleasures lightly, Madame, and no doubt there is many an
excellent Parisian bourgeois who comes here and makes or loses his few
francs, and gets no harm from it. But, still, I swore to myself that I
would warn you of the danger--"

They went out into the bright sunshine again, and Sylvia somehow felt as
if she had made a friend--a real friend--in the Comte de Virieu. It was
a curious sensation, and one that gave her more pleasure than she would
have cared to own even to herself.

Most of the men she had met since she became a widow treated her as an
irresponsible being. Many of them tried to flirt with her for the mere
pleasure of flirting with so pretty a woman; others, so she was
resentfully aware, had only become really inte