The street bore the name of Babylon.
And indeed there was something almost Babylonian, something very splendid
in the vast courtyard which formed the centre of what appeared, to
Sylvia's fascinated eyes, a grey stone palace. The long rows of high,
narrow windows which now encompassed her were all closed, but with the
clatter of the horses' hoofs on the huge paving-stones the great house
stirred into life.
The carriage drew up. Count Paul jumped out and gave Sylvia his hand.
Huge iron doors, that looked as if they could shut out an invading army,
were flung open, and after a moment's pause, Paul de Virieu led Sylvia
Bailey across the threshold of the historic Hotel d'Eglemont.
She had never seen, she had never imagined, such pomp, such solemn state,
as that which greeted her, and there came across her a childish wish that
Anna Wolsky and the Wachners could witness the scene--the hall hung with
tapestries given to an ancestor of the Duc d'Eglemont by Louis the
Fourteenth, the line of powdered footmen, and the solemn major-domo who
ushered them up the wide staircase, at the head of which there stood
a slender, white-clad young woman, with a sweet, eager face.
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