She felt rather lost without Anna, for she had become accustomed to the other's pleasant, stimulating companionship.
M.Polperro had said that dinner was at half-past seven.

Sylvia got up from her chair by the window.

She moved back into the room and put on a pretty white lace evening dress which she had not worn since she had been in France.
It would have been absurd to have appeared in such a gown in the little dining-room of the Hotel de l'Horloge, which opened into the street; but the Villa du Lac was quite different.
As she saw herself reflected in one of the long mirrors let into the wall, Sylvia blushed and half-smiled.

She had suddenly remembered the young man who had behaved, on that first visit of hers to the Villa du Lac, so much more discreetly than had all the other Frenchmen with whom she had been brought in temporary contact.

She was familiar, through newspaper paragraphs, with the name of his brother-in-law, the French duke who had won the Derby.