In the midst of all, the sound of a great clock striking broke the stillness of the snowy streets, and, just after, a party of men passed, singing a clamorous French song, and stamping an accompaniment with their heavy shoes. Lucia smiled as she listened, and then sighed. In truth this was a new life, into which nothing of the old one could come except love and memory.
Of course, they could not sleep that night. They missed the motion of the ship, which had lately lulled them; they could not shake off the impression of strangeness and feel sufficiently at home to forget themselves; and to Lucia, used to the healthy sleep of eighteen, this was a much more serious matter than to one who had kept as many vigils as Mrs. Costello. They appeared, therefore, in the morning to have changed characters; Lucia was pale and tired, Mrs. Costello seemed bright and refreshed.
The rapid and uneventful journey to Paris ended, for the present, their wanderings. When, on the following day, they started out in search of apartments, Mrs. Costello looked round her in astonishment. More than twenty years ago she had really known something of the city; now there only seemed to be, here and there, an old landmark left to prove that it was not altogether a new and strange place. Lucia was delighted with everything. She no sooner saw the long line of the Champs Elysées than she declared that there, and nowhere else, their rooms must be found.
"In the city, mamma," she said, "you could not breathe; and as for sleeping, you know what it was last night; and if we went further out, we should see nothing."
Mrs. Costello was too pleased to see her daughter looking and speaking with something of her old liveliness to be inclined to oppose her fancies, only she said with a smile,
"The Champs Elysées is expensive—remember that, Lucia—and I am going to make you keeper of the purse."
"Very well, mamma, if it is too dear, of course there is no more to be said; but you don't object to our trying to get something here, do you?"
"Decidedly not. Let us try by all means."
They found apartments readily enough; but to find any suited to their means was, as Mrs. Costello anticipated, anything but an easy matter. Lucia began, before the morning was over, to realize the fact that their £400 a year, which had been a perfectly comfortable income in Canada, would require very careful management to afford them at all a suitable living in Paris.
"It is only for a little while, though," she consoled herself. "In summer we shall be able to go into the country and find something much cheaper."