ld give this lady; but later on we
shall be very full--full all the summer! The hot weather is a godsend
for Lacville; for it drives the Parisians out from their unhealthy city."

He beckoned to his wife, a disagreeable-looking woman who was sitting in
a little glass cage made in an angle of the square hall.

"Madame Wolsky has brought this good lady to see our Pension!" he
exclaimed, "and perhaps she is also coming to stay with us--"

In vain Sylvia smilingly shook her head. She was made to go all over the
large, rather gloomy house, and to peep into each of the bare, ugly
bed-rooms.

That which Anna had engaged had a window looking over the back of the
house; Sylvia thought it singularly cheerless. There was, however, a good
arm-chair and a writing-table on which lay a new-looking blotter. It was
the only bed-room containing such a luxury.

"An English lady was staying here not very long ago," observed M.
Malfait, "and she bought that table and left it to me as a little gift
when she went away. That was very gracious on her part!"

They glanced into the rather mournful-looking _salon_, of which the
windows opened out on the tiny garden. And then M. Malfait led them
proudly into the dining-room, with its one long table, running down the
middle, on which at intervals were set dessert dishes filled with the
nuts, grapes, and oranges of which Sylvia had already become so weary at
the Hotel de l'Horloge.

"My clientele," said M. Malfait gravely, "is very select and _chic_.
Those of my guests who frequent the Casino all belong to the Club!"

He stated the fact proudly, and Sylvia was amused to notice that in this
matter he and mine host at the Villa du Lac apparently saw eye to eye.
Both were eager to dissociate themselves from the ordinary gambler who
lost or won a few francs in those of the gambling rooms open to the
general public.

"Well," said Anna at last, "I suppose we had better leave now, but we
might as well go on driving for about an hour, and then, when it is a
little cooler, we will go back to Paris and be there in time for tea."

The driver was as good-natured as everyone else at Lacville seemed to be.
He drove his fares away from the town, and so to the very outskirts of
Lacville, where there were many charming bits of wild woodland and
gardens up for sale.

"Even five years ago," he said, "much of this was forest, Mesdames; but
now--well, Dame!--you can understand people are eager to sell. There