"Well, never mind, dear," Ethel replied, "get out of it now. How good this omelette is! And the wine, too; really, I think the vin ordinaire here is better than anywhere else in Paris. Cheer up, old boy, because I am perfectly certain that everything is going to come right, and more quickly than you have any idea of."
She spoke the last words with meaning, and Basil looked at her, trying to read her face.
"Have you got something at the back of your mind, sweetheart?" he asked.
She nodded. She could not help it.
"There is something," she said—"a little something. I cannot tell you now, because it is not my secret, but wait and see. You will know more before long. For my part, I feel more happy and hopeful than I have been since our engagement."
For a moment he caught something of her gaiety. He lifted his glass, and drank. "To the future," he said, but the momentary animation flickered out, and it was a silent and sorrowful young man who kissed her farewell about half-past nine, at the corner of the street in which was the establishment for young ladies of the Demoiselles de Custine-Seraphin.
CHAPTER V
Gregory arrived at his hotel in the Latin Quarter about ten. Loneliness oppressed him, and he went to the couple of attics upon the top floor tenanted by himself and Deschamps. He hoped that the latter was in, and in a better mood. He wanted an explanation from him, and he was haunted by some half-formed fear that the Frenchman knew of some calamity that might be about to overtake them—that something had gone wrong, perhaps, with the great invention, or that their positions at the Société Générale Electrique were jeopardised.