ce, so many of my own English
schoolfellows. No, to a Frenchman his marriage means everything or
nothing, and if he loved a woman it would appear to him a dastardly
action to ask her to share his life if he did not believe that life to be
what would be likely to satisfy her, to bring her honour and happiness."

Sylvia turned to him, and, rather marvelling at her own temerity, she
asked a fateful question:

"But would love ever make the kind of Frenchman you describe give up a
way of life that was likely to make his wife unhappy?"

Count Paul looked straight into the blue eyes which told him so much more
than their owner knew they told.

"Yes! He might easily give up that life for the sake of a beloved woman.
But would he remain always faithful in his renunciation? That is the
question which none, least of all himself, can answer!"

The victoria was now crossing one of the bridges which are, perhaps, the
noblest possession of outdoor Paris.

Count Paul changed the subject. He had seen with mingled pain and joy how
much his last honest words had troubled her.

"My brother-in-law has never cared to move west, as so many of his
friends have done," he observed. "He prefers to remain in the old family
house that was built by his great-grandfather before the French
Revolution."

Soon they were bowling along a quiet, sunny street, edged with high walls
overhung with trees. The street bore the name of Babylon.

And indeed there was something almost Babylonian, something very splendid
in the vast courtyard which formed the centre of what appeared, to
Sylvia's fascinated eyes, a grey stone palace. The long rows of high,
narrow windows which now encompassed her were all closed, but with the
clatter of the horses' hoofs on the huge paving-stones the great house
stirred into life.

The carriage drew up. Count Paul jumped out and gave Sylvia his hand.
Huge iron doors, that looked as if they could shut out an invading army,
were flung open, and after a moment's pause, Paul de Virieu led Sylvia
Bailey across the threshold of the historic Hotel d'Eglemont.

She had never seen, she had never imagined, such pomp, such solemn state,
as that which greeted her, and there came across her a childish wish that
Anna Wolsky and the Wachners could witness the scene--the hall hung with
tapestries given to an ancestor of the Duc d'Eglemont by Louis the
Fourteenth, the line of powdered footmen, and the solemn major-domo who
ushered them u