Why, the
_potager_ of the Villa du Lac supplies the whole of Lacville with fruit
and flowers! When I was a child I thought this part of the garden
paradise, and I spent here my happiest hours."
"It must be very odd for you to come back and stay in the Villa now that
it is an hotel."
"At first it seemed very strange," he answered gravely. "But now I have
become quite used to the feeling."
They walked on for awhile along one of the narrow flower-bordered paths.
"Would you care to go into the orangery?" he said. "There is not much to
see there now, for all the orange-trees are out of doors. Still, it is a
quaint, pretty old building."
The orangery of the Villa du Lac was an example of that at once
artificial and graceful eighteenth-century architecture which, perhaps
because of its mingled formality and delicacy, made so distinguished
and attractive a setting to feminine beauty. It remained, the only
survival of the dependencies of a chateau sacked and burned in the Great
Revolution, more than half a century before the Villa du Lac was built.
The high doors were wide open, and Sylvia walked in.
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