How amazingly their relation to one another had altered in the last half-hour! For the moment they were enemies, and it was the enemy in Sylvia that next spoke.

"I think I shall go and have tea with the Wachners.

They never go to the Casino on Saturday afternoons." A heavy cloud came over Count Paul's face.
"I can't think what you see to like in that vulgar old couple," he exclaimed irritably.

"To me there is something"-- he hesitated, seeking for an English word which should exactly express the French word "_louche_"-- "sinister--that is the word I am looking for--there is to me something sinister about the Wachners." "Sinister ?" echoed Sylvia, really surprised.

"Why, they seem to me to be the most good-natured, commonplace people in the world, and then they're so fond of one another!" "I grant you that," he said.