I could imagine them living in a chateau on a hill overlooking some tiny village in--where shall we say ?" She hesitated for a moment, and then with an air of audacity she shot the word from her lips--"in Provence." The name, however, had evidently no significance for Sylvia, and Mrs.
Thesiger was relieved of her fears.
"But you didn't see them," she repeated, with a laugh.
"Yes, I did," said Sylvia, and brought her mother up on her elbow again.
"It struck me that the old lady must be some great lady of a past day.
The man bowed to you and--" She stopped abruptly, but her mother completed the sentence with a vindictiveness she made little effort to conceal.
"And the great lady did not, but stared in the way great ladies have.
Yes, I had met the man--once--in Paris," and she lay back again upon her pillow, watching her daughter.

But Sylvia showed no curiosity and no pain.

It was not the first time when people passed her mother that she had seen the man bow and the woman ignore.

Rather she had come to expect it.

She took her book from her berth and opened it.
Mrs.Thesiger was satisfied.