You do not realise, although you
doubtless know, what our legal procedure is like. Not even in order to
secure the guillotine for Madame Wachner and her Fritz would I expose
Mrs. Bailey to the ordeal of our French witness-box."
"And how will it be possible to avoid it?" asked Chester, in a low voice.
Paul de Virieu hesitated, then, leaning forward and holding Sylvia still
more closely and protectively to him, he said very deliberately the
fateful words he had never thought to say,
"I have an announcement to make to you, Mr. Chester. It is one which I
trust will bring me your true congratulations. Mrs. Bailey is about to do
me the honour of becoming my wife."
He waited a moment, then added very gravely, "I am giving her an
undertaking, a solemn promise by all I hold most sacred, to abandon
play--"
Chester felt a shock of amazement. How utterly mistaken, how blind he had
been! He had felt positively certain that Sylvia had refused Paul de
Virieu; and he had been angered by the suspicion, nay, by what he had
thought the sure knowledge, that the wise refusal had cost her pain.
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