When he came back again he put a large key on the dining-table.

“There!” he said, with a grunt of satisfaction.  “Now there will be nothing to disturb us any more.”

They all three sat down at the round dining-table.  To Sylvia’s surprise a very simple meal was set out before them.  There was only one small dish of galantine.  When Sylvia Bailey had been to supper with the Wachners before, there had always been two or three tempting cold dishes, and some dainty friandises as well, the whole evidently procured from the excellent confectioner who drives such a roaring trade at Lacville.  To-night, in addition to the few slices of galantine, there was only a little fruit.

Then a very odd thing happened.

L’Ami Fritz helped first his wife and himself largely, then Sylvia more frugally.  It was perhaps a slight matter, the more so that Monsieur Wachner was notoriously forgetful, being ever, according to his wife, absorbed in his calculations and “systems.”  But all the same, this extraordinary lack of good manners on her host’s part added to Sylvia’s feeling of strangeness and discomfort.

Indeed, the Wachners were both very unlike their usual selves this evening.  Madame Wachner had suddenly become very serious, her stout red face was set in rather grim, grave lines; and twice, as Sylvia was eating the little piece of galantine which had been placed on her plate by L’Ami Fritz, she looked up and caught her hostess’s eyes fixed on her with a curious, alien scrutiny.

When they had almost finished the meat, Madame Wachner suddenly exclaimed in French.

“Fritz!  You have forgotten to mix the salad!  Whatever made you forget such an important thing?  You will find what is necessary in the drawer behind you.”

Monsieur Wachner made no answer.  He got up and pulled the drawer of the buffet open.  Taking out of it a wooden spoon and fork, he came back to the table and began silently mixing the salad.

The two last times Sylvia had been at the Chalet des Muguets, her host, in deference to her English taste, had put a large admixture of vinegar in the salad dressing, but this time she saw that he soused the lettuce-leaves with oil.

At last, “Will you have some salad, Mrs. Bailey?” he said brusquely, and in English.  He spoke English far better than did his wife.

“No,” she said.  “Not to-night, thank you!”

And Sylvia, smiling, looked across at Madame Wachner, expecting to see in the older woman’s face a humorous appreciation of the fact that L’Ami Fritz had forgotten her well-known horror of oil.

Mrs. Bailey’s dislike of the favourite French salad-dressing ingredient had long been a joke among the three, nay, among the four, for Anna Wolsky had been there the last time Sylvia had had supper with the Wachners.  It had been such a merry meal!

To-night no meaning smile met hers; instead she only saw that odd, grave, considering look on her hostess’s face.