It was her meeting with the Comte de Virieu.
"I hope my going out so early did not disturb you," he said, in his excellent English.

"I saw you at your window." Sylvia shook her head, smiling.
"I had already been awake for at least half an hour," she answered.
"I suppose you ride?
Most of the Englishwomen I knew as a boy rode, and rode well." "My father was very anxious I should ride, and as a child I was well taught, but I have not had much opportunity of riding since I grew up." Sylvia reddened faintly, for she fully expected the Count to ask her if she would ride with him, and she had already made up her mind to say "No," though to say "Yes" would be very pleasant! But he did nothing of the sort.

Even at this early hour of their acquaintance it struck Sylvia how unlike the Comte de Virieu's manner to her was to that of the other young men she knew.

While his manner was deferential, even eager, yet there was not a trace of flirtation in it.
Also the Count had already altered all Sylvia Bailey's preconceived notions of Frenchmen.
Sylvia had supposed a Frenchman's manner to a woman to be almost invariably familiar, in fact, offensively familiar.

She had had the notion that a pretty young woman--it would, of course, have been absurd for her to have denied, even to herself, that she was very pretty--must be careful in her dealing with foreigners, and she believed it to be a fact that a Frenchman always makes love to an attractive stranger, even on the shortest acquaintance! This morning, and she was a little piqued that it was so, Sylvia had to admit to herself that the Comte de Virieu treated her much as he might have done some old lady in whom he took a respectful interest....
And yet twice during the half-hour her breakfast lasted she looked up to see his blue eyes fixed full on her with an earnest, inquiring gaze, and she realised that it was not at all the kind of gaze Paul de Virieu would have turned on an old lady.
They got up from their respective tables at the same moment.