triking 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 Elysees 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 Elysees 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
L400 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