Miss Keeldar, perhaps, thought that circumstances were changed since then. However, she made no remark, but, after a little reflection, quietly followed Henry.
Entering the schoolroom, she inclined her head with a decent obeisance, as had been her wont in former times. She removed her bonnet and hung it up beside Henry’s cap. Louis Moore sat at his desk, turning the leaves of a book open before him, and marking passages with his pencil. He just moved in acknowledgment of her curtsey, but did not rise.
‘You proposed to read to me a few nights ago,’ said he. ‘I could not hear you then; my attention is now at your service. A little renewed practice in French may not be unprofitable. Your accent, I have observed, begins to rust.’
‘What book shall I take?’
‘Here are the posthumous works of St. Pièrre. Read a few pages of the “Fragments de l’Amazone.”’
She accepted the chair which he had placed in readiness near his own. The volume lay on his desk—there was but one between them. Her sweeping curls drooped so low as to hide the page from him.
‘Put back your hair,’ he said.
For one moment Shirley looked not quite certain whether she would obey the request or disregard it. A flicker of her eye beamed furtive on the professor’s face. Perhaps, if he had been looking at her harshly or timidly, or if one undecided line had marked his countenance, she would have rebelled, and the lesson had ended there and then; but he was only awaiting her compliance, as calm as marble and as cool. She threw the veil of tresses behind her ear. It was well her face owned an agreeable outline, and that her cheek possessed the polish and the roundness of early youth, or, thus robbed of a softening shade, the contours might have lost their grace. But what mattered that in the present society? Neither Calypso nor Eucharis cared to fascinate Mentor.
She began to read. The language had become strange to her tongue. It faltered; the lecture flowed unevenly, impeded by hurried breath, broken by Anglicised tones. She stopped.
‘I can’t do it. Read me a paragraph, if you please, Mr. Moore.’
What he read she repeated. She caught his accent in three minutes.
‘Très bien,’ was the approving comment at the close of the piece.
‘C’est presque le Français rattrapé, n’est-ce pas?’
‘You could not write French as you once could, I dare say?’
‘Oh, no! I should make strange work of my concords now.’
‘You could not compose the devoir of “La Première Femme Savante”?’
‘Do you still remember that rubbish?’
‘Every line.’
‘I doubt you.’
‘I will engage to repeat it word for word.’
‘You would stop short at the first line.’