interest. Somehow she did not like the Pension Malfait, though it was clear that it had once been a handsome private mansion standing in large grounds of its own. The garden, however, had now been cut down to a small strip, and the whole place formed a great contrast to the gay and charming Villa du Lac.

What garden there was seemed uncared for, though an attempt had been made to make it look pretty with the aid of a few geraniums and marguerites.

M. Malfait, the proprietor of the Pension, whom Sylvia had already seen with Anna at the Casino, now came forward in the hall, and Sylvia compared him greatly to his disadvantage, to the merry M. Polperro.

"Madame has brought her friend?" he said eagerly, and staring at Sylvia as he spoke. "I hope that Madame's friend will come and stay with us too? I have a charming room which I could 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 Hôtel de l'Horloge.

"My clientèle," said M. Malfait gravely, "is very select and chic. 

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