Still, she felt horribly hurt.
"You see what I am like," he said, in a low, shamed voice. "I wish you
had made me give you my word of honour."
She got up. It was cruel, very cruel, of him to say that to her. 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. "I quite agree that that ugly old woman is
very fond of her 'Ami Fritz'--but I do not know if he returns the
compliment!"
Sylvia looked pained, nay more, shocked.
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