The next day was cold, but bright and sunny. From ten o'clock in the morning until déjeuner at twelve o'clock, Ethel McMahon endeavoured to instil some rudimentary knowledge of English into the minds of the fifteen-year-old daughters of prosperous tradesmen of the Luxembourg district at the academy for young ladies of the Demoiselles de Custine-Seraphin, two elderly ladies in whom parsimony and the proprieties struggled for mastery.
With many a sigh and shrug of disgust her demure charges had struggled with the intricacies of our language, had conjugated the verb "to love" in unexpected fashions, had laboriously assimilated the information that "ze weadder is going to be ver' fin to-day," and so forth.
At twelve, together with her fellow-teachers, Mademoiselle Marie and Mademoiselle Augustine de Custine-Seraphin, Ethel had taken the second breakfast of thin soup, pallid mutton, and stale tartines au confiture. At one she was free—free till nine o'clock in the evening. And as she came downstairs from her room dressed to go out, her face was so radiant and changed in expression that Mademoiselle Marie de Custine-Seraphin tossed her head as the girl passed, and gave it as her undoubted opinion to her sister that la jeune anglaise was certainly going to do more than spend a quiet afternoon and evening with her invalid mother.
"Figure to yourself, Augustine; her face was of the most beaming, her eye had sparkle, her cheeks were colour of rose. Ca fait un amant, n'est-ce pas?"
"A la jeunesse, comme à la jeunesse," her sister replied with a shrug, and went on making up the account of Mademoiselle Hortense Dubois, the well-to-do butcher's daughter who was leaving school that quarter.
Ethel McMahon hurried out of the quiet street in which the school was situated, walking towards the Luxembourg.
She was a typically Irish girl in feature, with those dark-blue eyes, like hot Venetian water, that hair black as a bog-oak root, that complexion of cream and roses that is hardly seen anywhere outside the Isle of Unrest. She was tall and walked with a swing, as she threaded her way among the chic and mincing Parisiennes towards her mother's tiny flat in the Rue Paczensky.
Dull as the girl's life was, hard as she worked all day, her youth and vitality were stronger than the power of circumstances. Vivid and impulsive in all she did, a constant spring of hope welled up within her, and she was certain that sooner or later—she believed very soon—everything in her life would come right. Dear Basil would get some lucrative appointment, the great invention would be financed by some kindly millionaire who would appear in the nick of time. They would get married, her mother would be able to live in the far healthier air of the Alps, as the doctor had ordered. Day in and day out Ethel was convinced that all would be well, and whenever she saw her lover she comforted and inspirited him as if they were indeed husband and wife.
Mrs. McMahon's flat of two rooms and a kitchen was high up in the great drab block of buildings, and, small as it was, the rent, as is the case with all flats in Paris, was proportionately high.
As she entered the hallway Ethel was handed a bundle of letters by the concierge. She did not examine them at the moment, but ran lightly up the stairs to the flat.