go in the omnibus," suggested Mdlle. Duprez. "Mr. Heathcote is not likely to be riding in omnibuses."
The little woman trotted off to the Rue du Bac, leaving Hilda to amuse herself with a flabby copy of L'Univers, three days old; or to gaze despondently at the stony quadrangle, with its bust of the good Lafontaine, and its three or four evergreens. Seen by those melancholy eyes of hers, the garden looked like a family vault, with the good Lafontaine for the father of the race.
Mdlle. Duprez came back in less than an hour. She had seen that dear good soul Mdme. Tillet, and had settled everything. Mdme. Tillet would be happy to receive Miss Heathcote, and would be to her as a mother. By putting her two daughters into one room, she could contrive to spare a neat little sleeping apartment for the new inmate. Things were somewhat Bohemian in the house; but what would you expect with a gifted and eccentric family? Everything was scrupulously clean. There triumphed the household genius, Mdme. Tillet, born in an old farmhouse in Brittany, where you might have eaten your dinner off the red brick floor.
Mathilde Tillet, the musical daughter, was prepared to welcome Miss Heathcote as a sister. There was no one in the family besides herself who cared a straw for classical music, from Beethoven to Raff. The brothers all believed in the Madame Angot school, and had no sympathy for anything loftier. Poor Mathilde had been pining for sympathy; and to have a young companion who would toil at Bach's fugues and preludes, and cram Chopin, Raff, and Brahms, and trudge to the Conservatoire with her, would be delightful.
"They are going to make much of you," said Louise Duprez, "I will answer for that in advance. My only fear is that the three brothers will all fall in love with you, and then there will be storms. They are rather fiery spirits."
"I shall not give them any provocation," said Hilda; and indeed the pale grave face, with the troubled look in the eyes, was not suggestive of coquetry.
"Mdme. Tillet promises to be ready to receive you to-morrow," continued Mdlle. Duprez. "I have agreed for you to pay her her own terms, which I do not think exorbitant, considering that everything in Paris is execrably dear. You are to pay her ten pounds a calendar month, which is to include everything, even to your laundress."
"It sounds very cheap," said Hilda, and she would have said the same if the sum had been twenty pounds, or even forty. She was not in a state of mind in which to consider pounds, shillings, and pence.
Mdlle. Duprez insisted upon taking her to see some of the sights of Paris—Notre Dame, the Louvre—and then they drove to the Conservatoire, and made inquiries as to the conditions
