F.E. Mills Young (continued 2)

When she was well enough to get out again she took a holiday and spent it at Hampden Court, going by steam-boat and returning in the evening by train after a long, solitary, but on the whole fairly enjoyable day. That was all the change of air she took, and greatly it benefitted her, far more than anyone would imagine so short a time could do. On her way home when she was crossing the road where Bedford Square merges into Gower Street a private hansom passed her with St. John and his cousin in it both in evening dress. Jill had fancied that Miss Bolton was out of town, and the sight of her quite upset all the pleasure she had derived from her jaunt.

They did not see her, for it was dark in the road, but a street lamp shining full in their faces as they drove past revealed them plainly to her, and she noticed that St. John was looking both bored and worried, a fact which compensated somewhat for the shock of disappointment she had experienced on seeing the heiress.

When she reached home there was a package of books addressed to her on the hall table, and a note in the bold, familiar handwriting she had learnt to know so well. She carried them up to her room and sat on the edge of her bed while she read the latter without waiting to take off her hat, or put in water the knot of wild flowers, faded now, which she had gathered and thrust into her belt.

“Dear Miss Erskine,” it ran,—

“I am sending you some literature on the chance of your being well enough now to do a little reading, and time, I know, hangs heavy when one is convalescent. Don’t worry about the lessons; I am enjoying the holiday; but when may I be allowed to call and see you? I have something to say to you which will not keep.

“Yours very truly, J. St. John.”

Jill’s heart gave a little jump as her eye took in the last sentence, and she made a shy guess at what the ‘something’ might be, a guess which sent the blood to her face in a warm rich glow, and set her pulses tingling in ecstatic enjoyment. She was curious to hear that something, so curious that she could hardly wait, and yet she was determined not to let St. John suspect how curious she really was. Going into the studio she sat down at the table and wrote her reply, a carefully worded little note thanking him for the books, and appointing Friday morning at the usual hour for him to visit her; stating that she was quite well and anxious to begin work. It was Wednesday so that there would be the whole of Thursday to get through, but Jill felt that she could manage that now that the letter was written, and tired though she was she went out again and posted it.

The next morning by the same post that St. John got his letter, Jill received her doctor’s account which was considerably heavier than she had expected. It is an expensive luxury being ill. She sighed as she looked at the bill, and wondered where the money was coming from. She had not got it just then that was certain; the settlement must be deferred for a while. How hard it was to want to pay and not be able to do so! Later in the morning as she sat huddled up near the window poring over one of the books St. John had sent—for she could not work with the thought of the morrow before her; her sense of the fitness of things had bidden her take a last holiday and give herself up thoroughly to the enjoyment of the present—her attention was diverted from the novel by the sound of a footstep on the stairs, a heavy, uncertain, unmistakably masculine step which reminded her with a strange thrill of St. John’s first visit when he had stumbled up those stairs in the darkness eight months ago. She waited where she was until the visitor knocked, a loud, imperative, double knock on the door with his stick, then she rose, laid aside her book, and slowly crossed the room. Outside on the narrow landing stood an elderly man, tall and gaunt, with shoulders slightly bent, and iron grey hair and beard. He eyed Jill uncertainly, very much as St. John had done, and, also like St. John, concluded that she must be a pupil; she looked so very childish, much more like a child, indeed, than had the lanky, short-frocked, girl-student who had studied there so brief a time.

“I wish to speak with Miss Erskine,” he said. And Jill, in vague foreboding, and with a dull repetition of her information on that former occasion, answered quietly,—

“I am Miss Erskine.”

“Good God!” exclaimed her visitor, and without waiting for an invitation he strode past her into the studio. Jill followed him wondering, and standing opposite to him, watched him closely, waiting for more.

“My name is St. John,” he said—the bomb had fallen. “My son—h’m!—studies art here.”

He looked round superciliously as though he wondered how anyone could study anything in so mean a place; no doubt he considered that his son’s explanation had been merely a plausible excuse.

“Yes,” Jill answered, and that was all.

He felt irritated with her that she was so quiet, so reserved, and so thoroughly self-possessed. He had expected something different; his ward had spoken of her as a horrid, designing, low-minded creature, his son had told him plainly only the night before that she was the one woman he loved, or ever could love; he had put the two descriptions together, and had pictured something handsome and sophisticated, bold perhaps, and necessarily charming, but nothing like what he found; not an ill-dressed, white-faced, ordinary-looking child-woman, whose great grey eyes watched him with such wistful, apprehensive, piteous anxiety that he turned away from their scrutiny with ill-concealed vexation.

“I have come on an unpleasant errand,” he went on, “and naturally feel rather upset. But these unpleasant things must happen so long as men are imprudent and women over anxious. Have you no one belonging to you?—no one to advise you?”

“Thank you,” Jill answered drawing herself up proudly, “I do not want advice.”

“So most young people think,” he said irascibly; “but they do well to accept it all the same. My son has been studying under you for some time, I believe?”

“Yes,” replied Jill, “since last January.”

“And have you any more pupils?”

“Not now; I had one other for a short time. But the locality is against my forming an extensive connection.”

“And you and my son work here alone two mornings a week?” he continued staring hard at her under his bushy brows, “Entirely alone?”

“Yes,” she answered, and his tone brought the blood to her pale cheeks in a great wave of colour; but she looked him steadily in the face notwithstanding. It did not seem to occur to her to resent this cross examination; she just listened to his queries and answered them as though he had a right to catechise her, and she must of necessity reply.

“Do you consider that altogether discreet, Miss Erskine?” he enquired.

Jill flushed painfully again, and her breath came more quickly. It is so easy to wound another’s feelings that sometimes the inflicter of so much pain hardly realises the anguish that he causes.

“Mr St. John,” the girl said quickly, speaking as though she were anxious to say what she wished to, before her suddenly acquired courage deserted her again, “I don’t quite understand what it is you want with me, and I can hardly believe that you have come here with no other intention than that of insulting me. Your last question was an insult. Do you think that I am in a position to be discreet entirely dependent as I am on my own exertions? Art with the many does not pay well. But I can assure you had your son been other than he is—a gentleman—I should not, as you so graphically put it, have worked here with him two mornings a week entirely alone.”

Mr St. John was rather taken aback; she was evidently not such a child as she looked.

“Excuse me,” he said, “but you mistake me altogether. I know my son thoroughly, and though I have never had the privilege of meeting you before to-day, yet once seeing is quite sufficient to disabuse my mind of any prejudice I may have entertained towards you. In speaking of indiscretion I was thinking entirely of outside criticism.”

Jill smiled faintly, contemptuously, incredulously. She had him at a disadvantage, and the knowledge gave her a gratifying sense of superiority.

“I am too insignificant a unit in this little world to excite criticism, captious or the reverse,” she answered. “I thought, myself, at first that it wouldn’t do, but have since been humbled into learning that my actions pass unheeded by the outside world. A great many actions of bigger people than myself pass unnoticed if they were only big-minded enough to realise it. Humanity does not spend its time solely in watching the doings of its neighbour; that is left for the little minds who have nothing more important to occupy themselves with. But you didn’t come here to warn me of my indiscretion. Would you mind telling me what the ‘unpleasant errand’ is?”

“No,” he answered bluntly coming to the point. “I was merely anxious not to be too abrupt. I want to induce my son to give up coming here, and I can’t persuade him. Will you?”

He did not look at her, but drawing a cheque-book from his pocket with unnecessary display placed it upon the table. Jill watched him comprehensively, and the blood seemed to freeze in her veins as she did so.

“Why,” she asked, and could have bitten out her tongue because the word choked in her throat, “why should he give up coming?”

“This is absurd,” exclaimed Mr St. John. “Let us give over fencing and understand one another. My son is infatuated—he generally is, by the way, it is a failing of his,”—Jill felt this to be untrue even while he said it, but she made no sign. “You, of course, are quite aware of his infatuation? But, Miss Erskine, he is a beggar; he has nothing in the world save what I allow him.”

“How degrading!” cried Jill. “I should have credited him with possessing more manhood than that. Everyone should be independent who can be.”

He smiled and tapped the cheque-book with his fingers. He fancied that she would be sensible.

“It would not be wise to marry a pauper, would it?” he queried. “For a man who marries against his relative’s wishes when he looks to them for every penny, would be a pauper, without doubt.”

“No,” Jill answered with unnatural quietness, “it would not be wise. I don’t think anyone would contradict that.”

“You would not yourself, for instance?”

“Most certainly I should not.”

“Now we begin to understand one another,” he resumed almost cheerfully. He had greatly feared a scene; but she was so absolutely unemotional that he felt relieved.

“Personally, you will understand I should have no objection to you as a daughter-in-law at all, only I have made other arrangements for my son, arrangements so highly advantageous that it would be the height of folly to reject them as he proposes doing. He must marry his cousin, the young lady whose acquaintance, I learn, you have already made—”

“What! The young lady with a soul above nature?” interrupted Jill, thoroughly astonished, and for the first time off her guard. “Oh, he’ll never marry her.”

“Indeed he will; there is nothing else for him to do. You forget that I can cut him off without a shilling, and will do so if he does not conform to my wishes.”

“Yes,” Jill acquiesced as though she were discussing something entirely disconnected with herself, “Of course, I had forgotten that.”

“The long and the short of the matter is this, Miss Erskine, if you insist upon encouraging my son in his mad infatuation you ruin his prospects and do yourself no good; for I believe that you agreed that you would not marry a pauper?”

“No,” she answered, staring stonily out of the window with a gaze which saw nothing. “I would not marry a pauper; I don’t think it would be wise, and I don’t think it would be right to do so.”

“A very sensible decision,” returned Mr St. John, senior, approvingly. “You have taken a great weight off my mind, my dear young lady; and I am greatly indebted to you. How greatly you alone are in a position to say,” and he tapped the cheque-book again with reassuring delicacy, but Jill did not notice the action and for once failed to follow the drift of his speech. A dull, heavy, aching despair had fallen upon her which she could not shake off. She seemed hardly to be listening to him now and only imperfectly comprehended his meaning.

“I am to understand then,” Mr St. John resumed, straightening himself, and looking about him with an urbane benevolence that was most irritating, “that you will work in conjunction with us? Disillusion him a little, and—”

“Oh, stop!” cried Jill, with the first real display of feeling that she had shown throughout the interview. “I cannot bear it. Do you think that because I have adopted art as a profession that I have turned into a lay figure and have no heart at all? You have robbed existence of its only pleasure so far as I am concerned. Can you not spare me the rest? I won’t impoverish him by marrying him but I am glad that he loves me, and I won’t try to lessen his love—I can’t do that.”

He regarded her with angry impatience, frowning heavily the while. It was a try on—a diplomatic ruse, he considered; he had wondered rather at her former impassiveness; but apparently she was not very quickwitted and had been unprepared.

“My dear Miss—Erskine,” he exclaimed, endeavouring to adapt himself to the new mood with but little success however, “you are too sensible altogether to indulge in heroics. I don’t wish to appear harsh, and I am quite certain that you have your feelings like anyone else, but there are Miss Bolton’s feelings also to be taken into consideration, and, though I greatly regret having myself to announce his dishonourable behaviour, she has been engaged to my son for some months past.”

Jill stared at him in dumb, unquestioning anguish. Engaged! Perhaps that had been the ‘something’ he wished to communicate to her. He had never, given her any reason to suppose otherwise; it had only been her vanity that had led her to imagine what she had.

“He has not behaved dishonourably,” she answered with difficulty; “he has never made love to me. It was you who told me that he cared; I did not know.”

He looked surprised.

“I am glad to learn that that is so,” he said. “I had feared things had gone further. And now, my dear young lady, I must apologise for the intrusion, and will finish up this very unpleasant business as speedily as possible.”

He opened the cheque-book and took up a pen to write with.

“You will allow me,” he began; but Jill took the pen quickly and replaced it in the stand. She was white to the very lips, and trembled all over like a person with the ague.

“Go,” she said hoarsely, “before I say what I might regret all my life. My God! what have I done or said that you should take me for a thing like that? Go, please; oh! go away at once.”

Chapter Seven.

The climax had come. It had rushed upon her with an unexpectedness that was overwhelming and had left her too stunned to even think connectedly. Only the night before she had been so full of glad expectation, and now everything seemed at an end and all the gladness vanished. She walked unsteadily back to her old seat by the window, and fingered absently the book St. John had sent. It was a new volume, and had been a gift; for he had written her name on the fly leaf. The fact had given her pleasure last night, now she wondered why he had done it, and laid the book down again wearily, all her former interest gone. There were other evidences of his gifts about the room in the shape of baskets once containing fruit and flowers. The fruit had been all eaten, and the flowers were dead; a bunch of them, fading fast, drooped in a vase upon the table; the rest, dried and discoloured, with all their beauty perished, were hidden away in Jill’s little bedroom where only she could see them, and recall the pleasure they had given; and from her exalted position on on the bracket which she occupied alone, Clytie looked down white, and pure, and pensive, seeming to understand. Oh! it was hard, and cruel, and bitter,—all the more bitter, that the mistake had been her own. She drew from the bosom of her frock St. John’s brief note, the note that had made her so happy, and read it again by the light of her new understanding, ‘Don’t worry about the lessons; I am enjoying the holiday.’ Perhaps he had meant it literally and not, as she had imagined, penned the clause solely with a thoughtful desire to save her anxiety. How vain she had been!—how mad! ‘I have something to say to you which will not keep.’ So vague a sentence, and yet she had fancied that she had guessed his meaning rightly. He might have meant a hundred things, and what more probable than the announcement of his engagement?

Jill crouched by the window for the rest of the morning hugging this new trouble which had dwarfed all the others into insignificance. At first she was too dazed to feel anything much, then gradually the anguish of mind grew keener until it seemed unbearable, and finally exhausted itself by its own violence. After that came a lull, and then followed resentment, fierce, active, healthy resentment that left absolutely no room for any other emotion; resentment against her recent visitor, angry, contemptuous, indignant; resentment against Miss Bolton of the fiercely jealous order; but keenest of all resentment against St. John, the cold, inflexible, heartsore resentment of wounded love. He ought to have told her of his engagement; if not actually dishonourable it was mean of him to have suppressed the fact when he must have seen that he was becoming necessary to her, when he knew, too, that she was more than, under the circumstances, she should have been to him; for that he did care for her she did not doubt—infatuation his father had called it, and it might be that he was right. At any rate St. John should have left the Art School before it had grown too late. This feeling of anger acted as a tonic to Jill; it braced her nerves and put her on her mettle, so that she determined to face her trouble and conquer it, and if possible show St. John what a poor opinion she had of him. But then came the remembrance of her small debts and her poverty. It had been a bad thing for her this acquaintance with St. John; she had not relied sufficiently on herself. When he was gone the fee would cease, and she had not sold any work for weeks. The last canvas that she had been engaged upon before her illness, painting from a model St. John had employed, stood against the wall unfinished and there were others ready for sale but nowhere to dispose of them. In the afternoon she went out—there was no time for holidays now—in search of a market, and returned in the evening weary, footsore, miserable, having had no luck at all with her canvasses, but—oh! the degradation to Jill’s artist-soul—having been obliged to accept as the only thing going an order for half-a-dozen nightdress sachets—‘pyjama bags’ as the oily, leering, facetious individual who had given her the commission called them.

“There was a run on ’em,” he had added, “the swells like painted satin things to keep their night-gear in.”

Jill had agreed to do the work, but she looked far from happy over it, and very nearly cried as she turned to leave the shop. The facetious individual had chucked her under the chin, and told her to ‘buck up,’ and he would look round and see if there wasn’t something else he could find her to ‘daub.’ Then he winked at her, and Jill had broken away in haste fearing that these overtures would lead to an embrace. And so she reached home, and that night went early to bed, and Thursday ended unhappily even as it had begun.

The next morning when she rose, the feeling of anger was still paramount. She had suffered so keenly yesterday that she did not think it possible that she could feel any greater pain, and she found it difficult to realise yet all that this sudden breaking with St. John must mean. She steeled herself to meet her old pupil with composure though she had not yet determined upon what she should say or do. At first she had thought of writing and forbidding him ever to come to the Art School again, but had subsequently rejected this plan as impracticable; what reason had she to offer? She could not say on account of your engagement, such an excuse would have placed her in a false position, and given St. John a right to put what construction he chose upon her motive. The only thing that remained for her was to receive him, and by saying as little as possible convince him how indifferent she was, and how very determined at the same time. And at nine thirty sharp he arrived, clattering up the steep stairs like a noisy schoolboy and marching through the open door straight into the studio where Jill stood white and nervous, but outwardly calm, waiting to receive him. There was a pleased, eager, confident air about him in striking contrast to the chilling quiet of her manner, and he grasped her hand before she could prevent him with a very hearty grip of genuine sincerity.

“This is good to see you about again,” he began. Then he stopped short struck by something in her face, and exclaimed anxiously. “Nothing the matter I hope, Miss Erskine?”

Jill was standing with her back to the light so that she had the advantage of him that way; but St. John’s sight was good and he detected at once the suppressed agitation of her manner; though she, herself, was unaware of it there was a whole life’s tragedy in the depths of her grey eyes.

“No,” she answered; “nothing beyond a trifling annoyance that I have been subjected to lately, and which I have determined to put an end to for good and all. It is absurd of course and really not worth discussing, but these petty worries are even more trying than big ones.”

“If it is not worth discussion,” he said, “we’ll let it slide for to-day at any rate. I have got so much to say that is worth discussing, that I want to say it at once. I give you fair warning that I haven’t come to work.”

As a matter of fact there was no work put ready for him; but he had not time to notice that. He was so boyish and impulsive, so gay and self-complacent that her anger gathered strength from his sheer light-heartedness.

“Come and sit beside me on the stool by the window, Jill,” he said, “and then we can talk at our ease.”

It was the first time that he had addressed her by her Christian name, and he glanced at her half smiling, half diffident, to see how she would take it.

“No,” she answered coldly, “what I have to say can very well be said where I am, and it will be as well to get through with it at once. You will think it rather sudden no doubt after my note of Wednesday, but, as I told you, I have been subjected to a great deal of annoyance lately and what I experienced yesterday has decided me to put an end to the existing state of affairs. I regret having to spring this upon you so abruptly, and in the middle of a quarter too, but I wish you to understand that I cannot teach you any longer, I wish you to leave this Art School.”

St. John looked mystified and incredulous, he was astounded at her request, at the cold precision of her voice, and the apathy of her expression. He felt annoyed with her and not a little hurt.

“May I enquire why you dismiss me thus suddenly?” he asked schooling himself to keep his vexation in check. “I should like to know what has induced you to act so precipitately.”

“No, you may not,” Jill answered crossly; “I only took you on trial, remember.”

“For a quarter yes, but then the probation was over, and it is hardly etiquette to dismiss a pupil in the middle of a term without vouchsafing any reason.”

“I consider it quite sufficient that I do dismiss you,” Miss Erskine responded. “We will not discuss the matter further, if you please.”

“Oh! yes, we will,” he answered, his temper like her own beginning to get the upper hand. “In fact I refuse to leave without an alleged complaint before my term is expired; you are bound to give a proper notice.”

“Not if I expel you,” Jill retorted.

“Expel me!” he scoffed. “What would you expel me for? You couldn’t do that without a reason.”

“But I have a reason.”

“A reason!” he repeated aghast, “a reason sufficient to expel me? What reason pray?”

“Making love to me.”

Silence followed—a depressing silence during which neither of them moved. She had spoken in the heat of the moment, the next she could have bitten out her tongue for her indiscretion. St. John stared at her fully a minute. Then he smiled rudely.

“Making love to you!” he repeated. “Absurd! I have never spoken a word of love to you in my life.”

It was true; he had not, and Jill’s cup of humiliation was full. What had induced her to make such an egregious error?

“You’ll be running me in for breach of promise, I suppose?” he continued ruthlessly. “Don’t you think that you’re a little—a little—well, conceited to be so premature?”

Jill turned upon him wrathfully.

“How dare you speak to me like that?” she cried. “It is only what people think. For myself it wouldn’t have mattered whether you had made love to me or not; I should soon have settled that.”

He changed from angry crimson to dead white, and gazed at her in hurt displeasure.

“You mean that?” he asked.

“Certainly,” she answered with vindictive and unnecessary emphasis, “I am not in the habit of prevaricating.”

“Very well,” he said in a tone of forced calm which contrasted ill with the pained expression of his face, “I believe you. And under the circumstances am quite of your opinion that further acquaintance had better cease. It was a mistake my coming at all both for you and for me. Good morning, Miss Erskine, and good-bye.”

He paused, thinking that perhaps her mood had been prompted by caprice, and that she might relent yet and call him back; but she made no movement at all beyond a bend of the head, and her voice was no kinder when she wished him farewell. Then he went, striding down the stairs and out into the street, resentful, angry, heartsore, little guessing how very much greater was the unhappiness he had left behind him where Jill, alone now in every sense of the word, stood battling with her grief and her emotion, and trying to face the difficulties which seemed crowding upon her on every side. She got out her satin work when he had gone and started upon the sachets with eager haste, glad of the miserable order now; for it kept her employed, and diverted the train of her thoughts. And all that day she sat working, working feverishly, dining, when the light failed so that she could see to paint no longer, off a crust of bread, the best her larder had to offer—indeed the only thing.

The next morning by the early post she received a letter from St. John. Her hand trembled so violently as she took it up that she could hardly unfasten the envelope, but, finally tearing it open she withdrew the contents, a sheet of notepaper with St. John’s compliments inscribed thereon, and enclosed within a cheque for the fee paid in full up to the end of the present quarter. The cheque fell to the ground unheeded but the sheet of paper Jill spread out on the table before her and then sat staring at it as though she could not take it in. It was the first brief missive of the sort that she had received; its very brevity chilled her. “With Mr St. John’s compliments.” So he had accepted his dismissal? It was better so, of course; but it was very hard to bear all the same.

Chapter Eight.

It was the Tuesday following that miserable and never to be forgotten Friday. Jill had been out in the morning to take back two of the sachets which she had finished, but had brought them back to make some alterations that the oily individual had pointed out to her in a playfully amorous fashion; a circumstance that had put her into as bad a temper as her grief stricken soul would allow. She sat on the red stool before her easel working, not at the sachets—she was too disgusted to touch them—but at her last canvas, with a lay figure posed in lieu of the model she could no longer employ. When the sound of someone mounting the stairs caused her heart to quicken its beating, and the tell-tale colour to come and go in her cheeks. It was St. John, she knew at once; very few men ascended those stairs, and only one with that quick decision born of familiarity. He knocked before entering, a ceremony that he had dispensed with altogether on class days when he had been a student; he did not, however, wait for permission to enter, but opened the door for himself. Jill’s mouth hardened obstinately as she glanced casually over her shoulder, and then, feigning not to see the bunch of flowers that he brought and laid humbly on the table as a peace-offering, went unmoved on with her work. She did not rise, did not even offer a word of greeting. St. John spoke first, awkwardly, deprecatingly, uncertain, what to make of her mood.

“Good morning,” he said hesitatingly, “I—I was passing and thought I would call.”

“Passing here?” interposed Jill incredulously, “what a circuitous route you must have taken to accomplish that.”

“Not at all,” he answered, “you aren’t so very out of the way. Besides I wanted to come.”

“So I supposed,” she retorted disagreeably. “But you might have saved yourself the trouble; you were quite safe paying by cheque, you know.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Mean! Why haven’t you called for your receipt? I own to having been remiss in not sending it, but I had my reasons; and after all it was only three days since, and a cheque is always pretty safe.”

“You know that I haven’t called for that,” he said angrily. “If I thought you really believed me capable of such an act I would—”

“Well, what?” she asked derisively.

“I don’t know,” he answered lamely, “clear perhaps. I had forgotten even that a receipt was customary, and certainly never looked for one from you.”

“Nothing so business like, I suppose?” snapped Jill. “I should have sent one though if I had not intended returning the cheque instead. I have no right to that money; I turned you away at a moment’s notice, you did not leave of your own accord.”

“That’s true enough,” he ruefully agreed. “Nevertheless the money is due to you; I received the tuition.”

“It is not due,” replied Jill firmly. “You are making me a present of it, Mr St. John, and I will not accept such a gift. There is your cheque, take it back if you please.”

He took it from her, tore it savagely into pieces, and threw them on the floor.

“So be it,” he answered wrathfully. “You must indeed be succeeding as you deserve, to reject what you have lawfully earned.”

Jill went white as she generally did when in a rage, and favoured him with a glance that he was not likely to forget in a hurry.

“I have not earned it,” she responded, “neither am I succeeding; two facts which you are thoroughly well acquainted with. Does that look like success?” And she drew from the cardboard box the sachets she had brought home again from the shop that morning, and threw them on the table in front of him. “That’s the kind of work that I have come to do, and I daresay I shall sink lower yet;—Xmas cards no doubt. Oh! yes, I have sunk pretty low. The man who gave me that order superintends the work, and corrects errors of detail. He does not like female figures in atmospheric drapery like those. He said the public wouldn’t buy them that way; a nude figure on a nightdress bag—he didn’t use the word nude, by the way, but plain vulgar English—was too suggestive, and requested me to take them home and paint in a garment—‘Just a small one’—as though he were alluding to a vest. Ugh! it makes me sick—it makes me blush. He wears his hair oiled, too,” she continued retrospectively, forgetting for the minute her resentment against St. John in disgust at her latest patron, “and—further degradation—makes love to me which for the sake of the miserable commission I dare not resent.”

What followed was unpardonable on St. John’s part but for the life of him he could not resist retaliating for the thrusts that she had given him.

“Perhaps the last is a hallucination,” he suggested ungenerously; “You have a tendency to imagine that sort of thing you know.”

She eyed him for a moment in stony displeasure, then pointed imperiously to the door.

“You may consider that remark worthy of a gentleman, Mr St. John,” she said, “I don’t. You will oblige me by leaving the studio at once; I—I shall be rude to you if you don’t.”

Her voice broke, and she turned to her work again abruptly, painting with feverish haste as thought she had not a moment to lose. In two strides St. John was behind her, and stooping he put his arms about her with a swift movement for which she was entirely unprepared, and which imprisoned her so firmly that she could not escape.

“Rude to me if you like,” he cried; “but not unkind, Jill—never any more.”

Jill had dropped her utensils, and the palette lay paint side downwards on the floor. She put her small hands on St. John’s wrists and tried to free herself from his embrace, but the attempt was ineffectual, his arms Only tightened round her, and his face bent lower until it was on a level with her own. She looked into his eyes and read in them a laughing mastery that defied her efforts to escape, and, even while it angered her, set her pulses leaping in a wild excitement that was half fear, half gladness. She breathed quickly, and pulled at his wrists again.

“Let me go,” she whispered. “How dare you touch me?”

But he only laughed in answer and held her closer to him, and for the first time Jill felt his warm kisses on her lips.

“It’s not a bit of good,” he said; “you can’t get away. I feel as though I could hold you to my heart for ever. You expelled me for a fault that I was not guilty of; I am now going to justify your accusation. Jill, Jill, you foolish child, what are you thinking? Don’t shrink away like that, dear. I love you, my darling, my little independent, high-spirited girl. I love every tone of your voice, every fresh mood, wound and vex me though they may at the time. Jill will you marry me?”

“No,” Jill answered with curt abruptness. He shook his head at her reprovingly, but looked not the least whit disconcerted.

“Oh! yes, you will,” he returned with confidence; “you must if I have to carry you all the way to the Church in my arms like this. I can’t let you go again; these last four days have been unbearable. Answer me truly, haven’t you found them so too, dear?—just a little sad and lonely, eh Jill?”

“Stand back,” she cried still struggling futilely to shake him off. “You are mad to talk to me the way you are doing, and I should be worse than mad to listen.”

“Oh! no, you wouldn’t,” he replied with gay audacity. “You can’t help listening, sweetheart, any more than you can prevent my kissing you. Come, Jill, end this farce and be candid. Is it pique, dear, or what? Why won’t you own that you care for me? I know you do.”

“Yes. Oh, my God, yes!” she answered, and she broke into violent sobs. “I wish from my heart that I could answer truthfully that I do not.”

He was startled at her outburst, and drew back in consternation letting his hands fall to his sides. She was free enough now, but she hardly seemed to realise the fact and made no attempt to rise.

“Jill,” he exclaimed, “what is it? What has happened, dear? Won’t you tell me?”

But Jill only buried her face in her hands and sobbed on. She would have given anything to have preserved her composure throughout this interview; but once having broken down there was no stemming the torrent; the flood must have its way, and a regular deluge it proved. St. John watched her uneasily for a while, then unable to stand it longer he went up to her again, and putting his arm around her neck, tried to draw her hands away. In a moment she was on her feet facing him, grief changed to indignation, scorn and anger in her eyes, while the tear drops glistened still upon her flushed cheeks, and trembled wet and sparkling on her lashes.

“Don’t come near me,” she panted; “your touch is hateful to me—keep away, do you hear?”

“Don’t worry yourself, my dear girl,” he retorted a trifle impatiently it must be confessed. “I have no wish to approach any nearer; indeed I’d rather remain where I am. If you would only tell me what it is all about, instead of flying off at a tangent we might arrive at a better understanding. Have I done anything to forfeit your regard?”

“Yes,” she answered petulantly, “you know you have.”

“Should I ask for information which I had already?” he questioned coolly. “Information moreover which is presumably hardly creditable to myself. What is the something, please?”

Jill looked at him coldly, but he bore her scrutiny well. He was grave, but he certainly did not appear apprehensive, nor was he in the least embarrassed or perturbed.

“What is the something?” he repeated. “I think I have a right to know.”

But Jill seemed to find a difficulty in answering, or a disinclination to do so; for she drew herself up and remained silent, an angry spot of colour in either cheek. St. John tapped the floor impatiently with his boot.

“Come, come,” he cried, “this is childish to accuse a fellow of some possibly imaginary wrong, and not give him the chance of refuting it. What heinous offence do you fancy me guilty of? Robbing a bank? I haven’t I assure you.”

He was turning her doubts of him to ridicule which only angered her the more. There was a gleam of amusement in his eyes and his moustache twitched ever so slightly.

“What! sceptical of that even?” he continued ironically. “So it’s my honesty that’s called into question, eh?”

“Yes,” Jill flashed back with a fierceness born of wounded pride, “your honesty, Mr St. John. Is it honest of you to come and make love to me? No, you know it is not, it is dishonourable, despicable—”

“Stop a bit,” he interrupted with a quietness and control which surprised himself; “don’t let us lose ourselves in a labyrinth of adjectives, and so get away from the main subject altogether. Why is it dishonourable for me to make love to you? For, though you will insist to the contrary, I am absolutely ignorant of any prohibitive reason.”

“That is impossible,” Jill replied, and he flushed at her want of faith in his veracity. “But as you are determined to keep your counsel until you discover how much I know I had better speak out I suppose. You are not free to propose matrimony to me.”

St. John’s eyebrows went up with a jerk.

“Indeed!” he said. “Your statement is news to me, so also is the very low idea you have formed of my character. In what way am I not free? Do you mean that there is someone else?”

Jill nodded; she could find no words.

“And the lady’s name?” he questioned in peremptory tones.

“Miss Bolton,” she answered with a visible effort. “I have recently learnt from unquestionable authority that you have been engaged to your cousin for some months.”

St. John started, pulled thoughtfully at his moustache for a moment, and then looking up sharply,—

“The name of your informant?” he asked.

“Never mind that,” Jill answered, “my informant was in a position to know. I have tried to but cannot doubt the assertion.”

“And yet you seem to find it easy enough to doubt mine,” he said.

She made no reply; and striding up to her he caught her by the shoulders and transfixed her with a gaze at once stern and reproachful.

“Speak,” he exclaimed. “I will know who is the lying, interfering mischief-maker who has spread such abominable reports about me.”

Jill swayed slightly in his grip, and her glance met his in wide-eyed questioning as though she would read his very soul.

“Ah!” she cried, “if it were false! if it were only false!”

“The name?” he repeated impatiently, and almost shook her in his excitement. She hesitated still for a minute, then the answer came unwillingly, more as though his glance compelled the truth than that she gave it voluntarily.

“It was your father,” she half-whispered, and her eyes sought the floor and stayed there as though she dreaded reading what she might see in his face.

He stared at her for a moment, then he pushed her from him with a laugh.

“Unquestionable authority certainly,” he said moodily, and laughed again. Jill remained motionless watching him, uncertain whether he intended denying the allegation or not, and he stood opposite in a towering rage glowering back at her with his brows drawn together in the old bad-tempered scowl.

“I suppose,” he went on after a pause, “that he communicated this intelligence to you between the time of your writing to me and my first appearance at the art school after your illness?”

“Yes,” she replied, “on the Thursday.”

“That accounts for your inexplicable bad temper that Friday,” he resumed unpleasantly.

“Information from such a source must certainly have been convincing, far more convincing than my contradiction. But did it not strike you to doubt the authenticity of the signature?”

“It was a word of mouth communication,” Jill answered coldly, “Mr St. John honoured me with a visit.”

“He came here?” repeated her hearer aghast. “My father? Impossible!”

“It does sound rather improbable I admit,” agreed Jill. “It was going to a great deal of trouble over a small matter, wasn’t it?—when a penny postage stamp would have done as well. But he seemed more concerned about it than either you or I. Was it likely, do you think, that I should question his statement? Had there been no truth in it why should he have bothered?”

“The only reason I can think of,” answered St. John, “was that he merely anticipated his desire. But for you I can find no excuse, not even one so flimsy as that. Why should you place perfect reliance on the word of a man you did not know, and, putting the worse possible construction on my actions, refuse to give me even the chance of justifying myself?”

“I don’t know,” retorted Jill ungraciously. “Looked at from your point of view I suppose it appears monstrous, but from my point it seems natural enough. I had no reason to doubt your father’s word, and, as you, yourself, informed me that morning you had never spoken a word of love to me in your life. There was no necessity for you to mention your engagement; men not infrequently prefer to conceal the fact from girls of inferior social standing—”

“Stop,” he cried, angrily. “This is too much. I could have forgiven the rest, but you go too far.”

“I didn’t know that I had entreated your forgiveness,” she said with a smile which mocked his indignation. “‘I love every tone of your voice,’” she mimicked, “‘every fresh mood, wound and vex me though they may at the time.’ You have a strange way of showing your affection, Mr Saint John, an admirable way of disguising it, I should say.”

St. John looked furious, and his tormentor continued relentlessly.

“Or is it that now it is wounding and vexing you? To-morrow, I suppose, you will be enamoured of all that I have said and done to-day?”

Then, her mood changing abruptly as the love in her heart reproached her for doubting and vexing him as she had, she went up to the table and buried her face shyly in the flowers he had brought.

“Go away now, my dear Saint,” she whispered, “and come to-morrow instead; for I like you enamoured best.”

But St. John was angry still, and not so ready to be propitiated. His hat lay on the table where he had placed it near the flowers, and Jill’s hand rested beside it—her fingers touching the brim, it may have been by accident though it looked more like design.

“I think I had better go,” he agreed, reaching out for it; “your opinion of me is not easy to forget, and—”

He had taken hold of his hat; but Jill’s small fingers had closed upon the brim on the other side, and kept their hold determinedly.

St. John desisted at once; it was incompatible with his dignity to struggle over his headgear.

“At your pleasure, Miss Erskine,” he said.

“It’s very strange,” mused Jill in a tone of innocent speculation; “do you know that until to-day I had always considered you handsome? What a difference it makes to a face whether it is smiling or glum.”

“One can’t keep up a perpetual grin,” he retorted, but his countenance relaxed a little despite his effort to appear unmoved, and seeing her advantage she followed it up, turning a scene which had been growing painfully strained into a comedy by her deft handling of the situation.

“No; not unless it is natural to one, which is even a greater affliction. I once heard of a man who had his nose broken for laughing at a quarrelsome individual in the street. As a matter of fact he wasn’t laughing; it was only that Nature had endowed him with a perpetual and unavoidable grin. But you are not at all likely to get your nose broken from a similar cause.”

“I should hope not,” he returned with disagreeable emphasis.

“Is mine on my face still?” enquired Jill putting up her hand to feel. “Why! it actually is. Funny, but I thought you had snapped it off. It is there, isn’t it?”

She went quite close to him and held up her face for inspection with a look in her eyes that St. John would have been more than human, or at any rate not genuinely in love, had he resisted. He made no attempt to; he just took the small face between his two hands and kissed it. And then they sat down together on the twill covered box to spoon a little, and afterwards talk matters over from a practical, common sense view, as Jill declared; though it would have been more sensible had they left the spooning and talked matters over first.

Chapter Nine.

“I wonder,” mused St. John, stroking Jill’s tumbled hair with his right hand, and holding both hers in his left, “why the governor should have come here and told you what he did? It was putting us all in such a false position, and—well, I should have considered it an act altogether beneath him.”

Jill sighed and nestled unconsciously a little closer to him.

“Can’t we forget all that for to-day,” she asked, “and just think only of our two selves? I quite believe you when you say that you are not engaged to your cousin. I think I believed it all along only I was so horribly jealous. I’m jealous still, jealous that she can see you when I can’t, and that she has a right to call you Jack—”

“But you have got that right too,” he interrupted, “a better right than she has. You will call me Jack, won’t you? I call you Jill.”

She laughed.

“Doesn’t it put you in mind of the nursery rhyme?” she said. “I never thought of it before.”

“Yes; let’s see, how does it go? We must alter it a little to fit the case, ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill to—’ we can’t say ‘fetch a pail of water.’”

“In search of fame together,” put in Jill.

“Ah, yes! Jack and Jill went up the hill In search of fame together, Jack fell down and broke his crown, And—”

“No,” interrupted Jill, “I won’t come tumbling after. You can say that I went on alone.”

“But that’s so unkind,” he objected; “besides it doesn’t rhyme.”

“Oh! well,” she answered after a pause devoted to thinking out a finish to the verse, “put, ‘But Jill goes climbing ever.’ That rhymes, and it’s true; I’m not going to stop in the valley trying to haul you up.”

“You’re a disagreeable little prig,” he exclaimed. “I should as likely as not be obliged to haul you.”

“And I daresay you could manage that,” she answered rubbing her cheek against his coat sleeve; “you’re big enough goodness knows. I should like to be hauled up and have no more climbing to do, Jack; it would be such a change. But that’s too good to come true I’m afraid, it will always be more kicks than coppers it seems to me.”

“What do you mean?” asked St. John in astonishment. “There will be no more kicks, Jill, when you are once married to me; I shall take all those.”

Jill went on caressing his coat sleeve vigorously, and her hand pressed his with tender warmth.

“We shall never marry, Jack,” she said; “we can’t.”

“Why?” he asked amazed.

“Because we can’t live on love, dear; I never did like sweet things much, and you don’t like bread and cheese, and stout. I don’t much either; but I have to go in for it; it’s cheap. Only now I do without the stout—and the cheese also the last day or two.”

“But, darling,” he exclaimed, not quite certain whether she was joking or not, “you are making troubles where they don’t exist. There will be no need to live on bread and cheese and affection—though I should be equal to that even if necessary—I have five hundred a year from my father, and he has promised to increase it when I marry.”

“Providing you marry your cousin,” Jill interposed. “He would certainly decrease it if you married me. Oh! I know quite well all about it. You forget that he called upon me; he told me so then. And though you love me and I love you we shouldn’t be such fools, Jack, as to marry on nothing.”

St. John looked glum. He entertained no doubt that his father had resolved upon this plan of deterring him from marrying the girl he wished to, and he determined to thwart him if possible.

“We could get married, and I could come and live here,” he suggested brilliantly, “and we could work together; that would be jolly.”

Jill smiled at this proposal but shook her head decisively.

“It’s no good; it wouldn’t answer,” she said. “We should fight dreadfully in a month, and then the models would get smashed. And you’d never earn anything at painting, you know; your pictures always require explaining, and your figures are atrocious. I can’t think why you will persist in going in for the human form divine; it’s most difficult; for any fool can see when a figure’s out of drawing except the one who draws it, and you never will learn that green isn’t a becoming tint for flesh even in the deep shadows.”

St. John heaved a sigh which seemed to proceed from the bottom of his boots. He was too genuinely despondent to resent her slighting criticism of his abilities, or too well aware of its truth perhaps. He rose impatiently, and walked restlessly up and down trying to think. Jill watched him, her own brows knit in a hopeless attempt to solve the difficulty.

“This is a pretty kettle of fish,” he exclaimed swinging round so suddenly that he nearly upset the model. “I’m hanged if I see what we are to do.”

“My dear boy,” remonstrated Jill in tones of apprehension, “do mind the lay figure. I am trying to finish this canvas with its sole aid,” pointing to the work that she had been engaged upon at his entry—a female figure recumbent on a night rainbow. “I can’t possibly employ a model, unless perhaps for a final sitting when I know that I shall see so many mistakes it will be a case of repainting it.”

Then St. John had a happy inspiration.

“Wouldn’t I do?” he asked in all good faith. “I’m bigger, of course; but I’d be better than a lay figure, and I don’t mind posing for you a bit.”

Jill broke into a laugh, the first laugh of thorough enjoyment that she had had for days.

“Ye gods!” she cried, “what next I wonder?” Then she got up and put her two arms about his neck.

“Dear old boy,” she said gratefully, “I believe you’d stand on your head if I wanted you to. But no, dear, I won’t pose you as ‘The Shepherd’s Delight,’ I’m sore afraid you wouldn’t do at all.”

Well the end of it all was that Jill absolutely refused to marry St. John on the understanding that they should pick up a precarious livelihood by their combined artistic efforts, though she was quite willing that he should speak to his father again on the subject if he deemed it of any use. She also thought that Miss Bolton should be apprised of what had taken place, and for the rest things would go on just as usual, only he would attend the Art School again, and, as he himself stipulated, pop in as often as he chose. Then Jill went and put her hat on at his request, and they strolled out to lunch somewhere, and afterwards spent the rest of the day as they liked, which wasn’t among pictures as one would have imagined from two such lovers of art. In the first place St. John drove to a jewellers and placed a handsome solitaire ring on the third finger of Jill’s left hand, then they attended a matinée at one of the theatres, and in the evening he took her to Frascatti’s to dinner. There were several men there whom he knew and saluted in passing. They bowed back and stared hard at the dowdy little girl he escorted, wondering where he had unearthed her, and why? That night Jill tasted champagne for the first time, and its effect upon her spirits was decidedly exhilarating. She liked champagne, she said, and St. John laughed at the naïveté of both manner and remark. When he asked her where she would like to finish up the evening she suggested a Music Hall; for there one could talk while the performance was going on. So they drove to Shaftsbury Avenue, and St. John got one of the comfortable little curtained boxes at the Palace where one can enjoy the stage if one wishes to, or sit back and not pay any attention to it at all. Jill liked the Living Pictures best. She almost forgot in the delight of watching that they were actually animate and not marvellously painted canvasses by some master hand. But St. John rather spoiled the effect by remarking that they were ‘leggy,’ whereat she told him that he was horrid; nevertheless she noticed how very quietly the house received these artistic representations; but it was the quietness of appreciation had she known it—the appreciation which enjoys, yet with a very common mock modesty fears to be detected enjoying. Jill glanced at her lover as he sat back watching her instead of the stage with a smile of quiet amusement on his face.

“They are lovely, Jack,” she said. “I should like to carry them all home in reality as I shall in my mind’s eye. But this is the wrong audience to exhibit such things to.”

And St. John agreed with her, though he was by no means certain as to the soundness of her logic, but he would have agreed to anything just then; he was in the idiotic, inconsequent stage of love sickness, and had got it fairly badly.

When the Music Hall was over he suggested a late supper somewhere, but Jill was firm in her refusal; so they drove straight to her lodgings where St. John alighted and opened the door for her, and embraced her several times in the dirty passage before he finally allowed her to shut him out and go on up to her room. And that night she fell asleep with her cheek pressed to the diamond ring, and a smile of perfect happiness parting her lips.

The next morning Jill went to work on the sachets again, though it was with the utmost difficulty that she managed to concentrate her thoughts upon anything at all save Jack and the new ring. As it was, her ideas kept wandering, and she caught herself every now and again breaking off into song—snatches of Music Hall choruses that she had heard the night before. And then in the midst of it in walked St. John, and seeing what she was doing he took the satin away from her in his masterful fashion, and crumpled it up in his hands before her horrified gaze.

“You said that the smirking idiot who gave you these to do made love to you,” he said. “I won’t brook any oily rivals of that description.”

Jill laughed. She rather enjoyed the idea of his being jealous.

“I thought you said that that was a hallucination,” she retorted. “I was almost prepared to believe you and to think that the next time he chucked me under the chin, or put his arm round my waist that it was only my vivid imagination.”

“He did that?” cried St. John fiercely.

“Oh, dear! yes; several times.”

“Give me his address,” commanded her lover. “I’ll stop his love-making propensities. Where does this greasy Lothario hang out?”

But Jill was too discreet to say.

“I forget,” she answered lamely; “I never was good at locality. Don’t look so savage, Jack; he only chucked me under the chin once, and I washed my face well directly I got back, indeed I did; I scrubbed so hard that I rubbed the skin off, I remember, and it was sore for two days.”

“You ought to have returned the work at once,” grumbled St. John. “I am surprised at your taking it after that.”

“Surprised!” she repeated. “You wouldn’t have been so astonished had you lived for a few days on a stale crust, and expected to dine the next off the crumbs if by good luck there happened to be any crumbs left.”

“Oh! Jill,” he exclaimed, “I’m a brute dear. Has it ever been as bad as that, my poor little girl?”

Jill nodded affirmatively, and then let her head recline contentedly against his shoulder, glad to nestle within the comforting security of his strong arms, and feel that there she could find both shelter and defence.

“Have you told your father yet?” she asked a little nervously.

“No, dear,” he answered. Then added quickly, “I will some time to-day, though.”

“Yes,” she said, “don’t put it off any longer; I think that he ought to know; and yet I feel somehow that his knowing will put an end to all this pleasant fooling. Oh! Jack, I’m such a horrid little coward, I know I am.”

She lifted her face, and he saw that she was laughing even though the tears stood in her eyes.

“If you feel like that,” he said tenderly, kissing the upturned face, “why not get married first and tell him afterwards?”

“Oh! Jack, fie,” she cried; “you are turning coward too.”

“Not I,” he contradicted stoutly, then added with a smile, “I think I am though; I’m so terribly afraid of your slipping through my fingers, you eel.”

“Oh, you dear!” whispered Jill softly. “It is nice to have someone wanting you so badly as all that. I won’t slip through though; I am far too comfortable where I am.”

Chapter Ten.

The following day, St. John entered the studio with a face the gravity of which boded no good for their plans, Jill feared. She knew at once that his father had refused to countenance the match, and although she had not dared to hope for his sanction, the knowledge that he had positively denied it came upon her with a sense of shock. Not for one moment did she think of resenting his objection, nor of questioning his right to forbid the marriage, she just crept within the shelter of St. John’s arms and stayed there, her face, with its flush of mortification, hidden against his breast.

“The governor’s a silly old fool,” St. John exclaimed savagely, thinking less, perhaps, of the girl’s discomfort than his own personal grievances. “He’s cut me off with nothing—at least five hundred pounds; he gave me a cheque for that amount before giving me the kick out.”

“We won’t take it,” Jill cried wrathfully with the improvident contempt of the penniless, “We won’t touch a farthing of it, will we?”

“Oh; yes, we will,” he answered. “We’ll get married on it in the first place, and then live on the rest for so long as it will last.”

“I wouldn’t get married on that five hundred pounds for anything,” Jill said firmly.

“Well, I’m going to,” he replied, “I’m going to see about it now. We’ll go before a Registrar—much nicer than Church, you know, doesn’t take so long. And then I’m going to invest the rest with a little capital that I have by me in a snug little business—haberdashery, or something of the kind; I’m not quite sure what, though I thought about nothing else all last night.”

Jill gave a quiet laugh.

“My dear old boy,” she said, “you must allow me a say in that matter if you please. I wouldn’t let you have a haberdashery; I’d sooner that you were a pork butcher at once.”

“No good,” he answered. “I’ve thought of that too; but I couldn’t kill a pig for love or money. I could measure out a yard or two of ribbon though, and sell worsted stockings to old women. I say, Jill, what do you think of a photographic studio?—That’s the next best thing to art.”

Jill had a fine contempt for photography, and said so, but St. John was rather taken with the new idea, and as he pointed out while he did the mechanical work she could paint portraits and enlargements, and have a kind of Art Gallery as well. He spoke with a cheery confidence that showed that he fully expected her to fall in with his plan immediately and be struck as he was with the brilliance of the idea. But for once Jill’s spirit seemed to have deserted her, and she turned away with a catch in her voice, and quite a forlorn expression in the grey eyes which a moment ago had been smiling into his.

“Oh, Jack, don’t!” she cried. “I can’t bear to listen to you. My poor old saint, I wish that you had never met me.”

“Stop that,” commanded St. John sharply. “You make me feel such a beastly cad—the son of a beastlier cad—”

She turned and laid her hand upon his lips, shaking her head at him reprovingly.

“Your language isn’t fit for a stable,” she said in her elder sister, teacher-to-pupil tone. “I can’t have you calling people names here. Besides what I said need not have excited your risability like that. I meant it in all sincerity; it is a pity as things have turned out; I was quite happy here working by myself, and got along fairly comfortably, and I think now that we have had our pleasant fooling and the crisis is reached I should like to offer you your freedom.”

“Thank you,” he answered grimly, and he stood looking down from his six feet of brawny manhood upon the small determined figure in front of him busily engaged in withdrawing the ring—her sole article of jewellery—from the third finger of her left hand. She held the shining circlet, emblem of their mutual love, towards him with a smile upon her lips, but he made no attempt to take it though he understood the significance of her action well enough.

“Wouldn’t you like to keep it to wear on the other hand?” he enquired sarcastically. “It isn’t etiquette, I know; but ladies do it sometimes, I believe.”

“But your freedom?” Jill persisted, still holding the ring before his eyes. “Won’t you take that?”

“Oh, certainly,” he replied disagreeably, “but that doesn’t constitute my freedom, does it?” with a contemptuous glance at the small golden hoop in her hand.

“No, I suppose not,” the girl answered in a voice of such blank disappointment that St. John grinned despite his ill-humour; her lugubrious expression aroused his mirth. Jill saw nothing to laugh at. The situation had assumed for her quite a tragic aspect, and her eyes blazed with a very wrathful light as she gazed witheringly up into his broadly smiling face.

“I don’t see,” she observed icily, “that my remark called for any violent ebullition of mirth. I wasn’t aware that I had said anything funny. Is there insanity in your family?”

“Not that I know of,” he replied, taking possession of both ring and hand as he spoke, and keeping his hold despite her angry attempt to free herself. “’Pon my word, Jill, you’re enough to try a fellow’s patience. You deserved to be taken at your word just now, and didn’t expect to be, that’s the joke. And now I’ve got to put this ring back in its place, I suppose. The next time that you take it off for the childish satisfaction of dangling it an inch from my nose I shall keep it and give it to some other girl.”

“Miss Bolton perhaps?” remarked Jill in her nastiest tone.

“Don’t you think it would be better,” he suggested without looking at her, “to leave Evie’s name out of our disputes?”

“I don’t know whether you consider it gentlemanly,” Jill cried fiercely, “to try and make me feel mean?”

“I’m glad if I have succeeded in making you feel it,” he answered imperturbably, patting the ring in place, and slowly releasing her hand, “for you certainly are mean. Your meanness is, in fact, only to be equalled by your bad temper and that exceeds it. I am not blind to your faults you may observe; they are as plentiful as flies in summer, and equally irritating.”

“And to think,” exclaimed Jill in exasperation, “that I was going to give you up just for your personal benefit! I won’t now; if you try to back out of it I’ll have you up for breach of promise.”

“You will, will you? Jove! I almost believe you would. And you’d win your case too, for if you looked as belligerent as you do at present the jury would be afraid to give it against you. It isn’t a bit of use, Jill, getting nasty; I’m in such an angelic frame of mind myself that not even you could put me out. Get your hat on, old girl, and let’s go and look for our shop together. We are going to become public benefactors, and hand down to posterity the idealised representatives of the present generation.”

Jill smiled scornfully.

“I am sorry for the idealisation if you are going to operate; they’ll be more like caricatures I’m thinking. What do you know about photography?”

“Know about it!” echoed St. John indignantly. “Why I’ve got a camera of my own; Evie and I used to dabble a good deal in photography at one time.”

“It strikes me that you dabbled in a great many things,” retorted Jill. “Perhaps that accounts for the very indifferent manner in which you do everything. If you are counting on your amateur efforts solely, I fear we shall end in the bankruptcy court.”

“Jill,” he said very gravely, and in such an altered tone that Jill looked up in surprise, “are you afraid to throw in your lot with mine now that my circumstances are almost as destitute and uncertain as your own?”

Jill gave a gasp. For a moment she looked as if about to offer an indignant protest, the next she dissolved into tears. St. John’s half-formed suspicions faded immediately. His father had planted them in his mind the night before. He had said “tell her that you are penniless and see how sincere her love will prove.” The girl’s uncertain mood had recalled the words to his memory but he knew as soon as he had spoken by the look in her eyes that he had entirely misjudged her.

“How can you say such unkind things?” she cried. “I believe you are trying to make me hate you.”

“Darling,” he said contritely, slipping his arm about her, and holding her closely to him, “forgive me; I didn’t mean it, indeed I didn’t.”

“You did,” sobbed Jill. “You thought that I had been running after you as a good speculation—”

“Don’t, dear,” he entreated, “you make me feel so ashamed of myself.”

“And so you ought to,” she answered, drying her eyes on the corner of her painting apron, and looking up at him with a very woebegone face. “I shall never forget that, I’m afraid; I have a horrid memory for cruel things, and I have loved you so truly all the time. I would go through a dozen bankruptcy courts with you, and—and—and end up in the work-house even sooner than lose you now.”

She dropped her head again with a fresh burst of tears, and St. John felt as intensely miserable as it is possible for a man to feel, intensely ashamed of himself also for giving voice to such an unjust suspicion. He racked his brains in search of something soothing, but the only thing he could find to say was,—

“Don’t keep hitting a fellow when he’s down, Jill.”

It wasn’t a very brilliant, nor a very original remark, but it was the very luckiest thing he could have hit upon. Its effect on Jill was marvellous; she recollected what she might have remembered sooner, that he had been passing through very stormy times lately, and all on her account. A man does not generally relish breaking with his family and throwing up a luxurious home for the doubtful prospect of earning his own living when he has not been brought up to any profession, and hasn’t a superabundance of capital to launch him into a going concern. St. John had certainly not relished it, but he had made no complaint and had met his ill fortune with a cheerfulness and pluck which did him infinite credit. Jill mopped her eyes again vigorously and put both arms around his neck.

“I have been horrid,” she said; “I have done nothing but worried you ever since you came, and you were worried enough before. Jack dear, I’m afraid we shall quarrel dreadfully after we are married. I really am bad-tempered, and you are not—not altogether amiable, are you?”

St. John laughed.

“I don’t care,” he said, “so long as we make it up again. Rows are like hills in cycling, beastly at first, but when you’re used to ’em a flat road seems dreadfully monotonous.”

Jill saw very little of her fiancé during the next week. He was busy looking for something to do! for she had declared that until he found permanent occupation their marriage must be postponed; she was not going to take such a serious plunge on the strength of the five hundred pounds. St. John acknowledged the wisdom of her decision but chafed at the delay. Having been ejected from the paternal roof he was anxious to have a home of his own, and more than anxious to see Jill at the head of his frugal board. He was not quite sure how Jill existed; it worried him rather to think of her poverty; but she would take no assistance from him. Once he deprecatingly offered her a ten pound note which she however firmly refused. She would not allow him to support her until he had the right to do so.

“Don’t you think that that’s rather straining at a gnat?” he said.

“Perhaps,” she answered smiling. “But you would not like to think that your coming had lessened my pride and independence, and made me lazy and unselfreliant, would you? If I actually need assistance I will come to you, dear old boy.”

And so he had gone forth in search of a livelihood more than ever anxious for the ceremony to come off, and not a little eager to commence the new life of independence and hard work. St. John had a friend who knew everything. There is a difference between a man who knows everything and the man who thinks he does; St. John’s friend was the right sort, and he put him in the way of the very thing he was looking for. A photographer of the firm of Thompkins and Co, having recently dissolved partnership through the Co, setting up for himself was advertising through the regular channels for a new partner. St. John’s friend having some slight acquaintance with Thompkins introduced the two, and eventually St. John invested his capital and returned to the studio in triumph to inform Jill with much pride and satisfaction that he represented the Co in “Thompkins and Co.—photographers.”

Chapter Eleven.

“And now, Mrs St. John, I think we’ll go and have lunch,” Jill’s new husband remarked as they stood together outside the Registrar’s office, the sun shining brightly on the two faces, his quietly amused, hers a little grave and wondering at the importance of the now irrevocable step which they had taken. At the sound of her new name Jill smiled. “It will be our wedding breakfast,” she said.

“So it will. We’ll have fizz and go a buster—a man doesn’t get married every day. I didn’t sleep a wink last night, Jill for thinking of it.”

Jill hadn’t slept either. In morbid retrospection, half sweet, half painful, she had spent the night in the empty studio—empty because St. John had had every stick of hers removed to her new home, even to the remains of the Clytie that he had broken, and which had been carefully preserved among Jill’s other treasures as too sacred to be thrown away. She looked up at him, the memory of all his thoughtfulness adding an increased tenderness to the loving smile that chased the momentary sadness from her face.

“You’re a goose, my big boy,” she said slipping her hand through his arm as she spoke with a very unwonted display of affection. “And how nice to feel that you are my boy—my very own. No one can part us now, Jack; not all the spiteful machinations of the tyrannical, disagreeable, up-to-date parent can come between you and me, dear, nor alter the fact that we are man and wife.”

“That’s true,” replied St. John with mock resignation. “There’s no getting out of it edgeways; for there is a helpless finality about matrimony that carries its own conviction. Jill, my dear, you look uncommonly nice in that gown.”

Jill laughed contentedly. He had told her that three times already but she had not the least objection to hearing him say it again. She patted the grey folds of her dress with her grey-gloved hand, and tried to get a glimpse of herself in the shop windows as they passed. It was a very simple costume, and a very serviceable one in light tweed. She had managed to dispose of some work lately and had felt justified in being a little extravagant; though the extravagance had not gone further than buying the necessary materials; her own busy fingers had fashioned the costume with the aid of experience and a paper pattern, and the result was highly satisfactory and very creditable from the top of the smart little toque to the soles of her neat new walking-shoes.

“Where shall we go?” enquired Jill serenely.

“To Frascatti’s,” he answered, and to Frascatti’s they went accordingly. St. John ordered a very recherché little lunch although he was fully aware that even in small matters it was necessary to practise the strictest economy, but, as he argued in answer to Jill’s expostulations, it was out of all reason to expect a man to be economical on his wedding day.

“I’m afraid it’s out of all reason to expect you to be economical at all, my dear saint,” remarked his wife sweetly, slowly withdrawing her gloves, and regarding her very new wedding ring with marked complacency. “I shall have to keep the purse, that’s evident, and dole you out an allowance.”

“It’ll put me in mind of my schoolboy days,” laughed St. John, “when I received sixpence a week, and very often had that confiscated in payment of fines.”

“I can quite imagine it,” retorted Jill with a grave little shake of the head. “It is strange considering what horrid little wretches boys generally are how really nice some of them grow up.”

St. John laughed again; the compliment was intended for him, and he appropriated it. He paused in the act of taking his soup to look across at his small wife. Never had he felt more supremely happy and contented than he did at that moment. He had a careless habit of living solely in the present, turning his back on the past, and deliberately refusing to look into the future—that future which with its work, its independence, and its possible poverty meant so much to them both, and would prove not only a test to the strength of his manhood but to the sincerity of their mutual love. To-day he was determined to put such thoughts on one side; it was his wedding morning and he meant to enjoy himself. He turned his attention from his wife’s face to the study of the wine card, and ran his eye quickly down the list. “Do you like your wine dry?” he asked.

“Um?” queried Jill.

“Do you like dry wines?”

“How funny!” she said. “I didn’t know there was such a thing. I don’t think I should; I’m so thirsty.”

St. John looked the tiniest shade put out, the waiter stared, and a good-looking man with a lightish moustache who happened to be passing their table at the moment glanced down at the small grey figure in careless amusement. Jill flushed, suddenly conscious of having said the wrong thing, and the man behind her, looking from her to her companion and recognising the latter, wondered what country cousin St. John had got hold of now.

“I don’t know much about it,” she admitted in a slightly vexed tone, “but I liked what we had here before.”

St. John gave his order; then he looked into the troubled grey eyes opposite and smiled reassuringly. As he did so he caught sight of the man near Jill’s chair; he was about to seat himself at the next table, but before he could do so St. John rose and intercepted him.

“Markham!” he exclaimed. “This is luck. I thought you were abroad.”

“Only returned last night,” the other answered shaking hands. “Glad to see you again, St. John. All well at home?”

“I don’t know,” St. John replied; “haven’t been there lately. Come over to our table, old boy; we wanted someone to drink our health.”

Markham elevated his eyebrows in a show of surprise. St. John had hold of him by the arm, and he allowed himself to be drawn forward until he stood facing the little girl in grey, not quite clear even then as to how matters stood.

“Jill,” exclaimed her husband, “allow me to introduce you to Mr Markham, a very old pal of mine.”

Jill held out her hand with a smile. She was a little disappointed that St. John had so readily ended their tête-à-tête luncheon, but she carefully refrained from letting him see it, and graciously seconded the invitation which the stranger appeared by no means reluctant to accept. He took the seat on her right hand and looked her over with a glance that was at once curious and puzzled. She was a lady that was evident, though different in most respects to those he was accustomed to meet; what he could not rightly fix was the relationship between her and St. John. When he left England he had understood that the latter was to marry his cousin—it had been for that reason that he had gone abroad—and yet a moment ago St. John had distinctly asked him to ‘drink our health.’ Whose health? And why?

“This is a very festive occasion you are participating in, Markham,” St. John observed gaily. “It is my wedding day. As the only guest present we look to you for a speech.”

Mr Markham stared incredulously first at St. John, and then at his wife. Suddenly he caught sight of Jill’s new ring—the plain gold circlet seemed to carry conviction with it. He bowed to Jill and impulsively held out his hand to St. John.

“My congratulations, old fellow,” he cried warmly, “my very sincere and hearty congratulations. By jove! I am surprised. But—”

He paused. He had been going to ask ‘what about Miss Bolton?’ but bethought him in time that it might not be a welcome topic to the bride.

“You don’t congratulate me” said Jill smiling, “and yet you might do that more readily because you know Jack and you don’t know me. I feel quite apprehensive; I’ve taken him for better and worse, you know.”

Mr Markham laughed.

“I think your having done so does infinite credit to your judgment, Mrs St. John,” he said. “I wish you both every happiness and success.”

“Thank you,” Jill answered: “I feel reassured and good wishes are always most acceptable.”

“To wish success in our case is very appropriate too,” struck in St. John. “I’m going to give you another surprise now, old fellow; I’ve set up in business on my own.”

“Eh?” enquired Mr Markham, putting down his wineglass and staring at his friend. St. John whipped a card out of his pocket and laid it on the table cloth.

“When you want your photograph taken,” he observed in some amusement, “go to that address, my boy, and you’ll get taken as you never were before. I’m the Co, and I go into harness a week from to-day.”

To say that Mr Markham was astonished would be to express his sensations very inadequately he was astounded—almost incredulous. He looked at St. John’s smiling face, and then at Jill’s grave, matter-of-fact one, and ejaculated “By George!” in a tone that made St. John laugh more than ever.

“It’s a fact,” observed the latter. “Put the card in your pocket and advertise the firm a bit at the club and elsewhere. Besides you’ll know my address then, though, of course, it is quite permissible for you to forget that if you want to.”

Mr Markham took up the card in silence, read it, placed it carefully in his pocket-book, and sitting back in his chair fell to laughing immoderately as though it were a huge joke. He had grasped the situation immediately when he had quite taken in the news. He had wondered that Jack and his wife should be having their wedding breakfast at Frascatti’s, and alone; but now he understood. He knew that St. John, Senior, was bent on marrying his son to Miss Bolton, and he also knew that St. John possessed no private means. He had evidently run contrary to the paternal wishes and this was the outcome. What a fool he was to be sure! To chuck up quarter of a million and pretty Evie Bolton for—

“You must really excuse me, Mrs St. John,” he exclaimed meeting Jill’s surprised, and slightly disapproving glance with easy frankness, “but it’s just immense to hear Jack talk about work; I don’t suppose he has done a hand’s turn in his life.”

Jill lifted her eyes to her husband’s with unconcealed pride in her look.

“It doesn’t follow that he won’t be able to do it,” she answered confidently. “You none of you seem to have understood him. He is full of pluck and perseverance, only he has always been discouraged.”

“We understood the old Jack well enough,” Markham responded. “But there comes a crisis in some men’s lives when their whole nature undergoes a complete change. It doesn’t always last; they often go back to the original state which means disappointment, and sometimes disillusionment too. I don’t mean that St. John is likely to go back, I was merely—”

“Preparing me,” suggested Jill.

“No; wandering off into personal experience—a mistake at any time, unpardonable under existing circumstances. I won’t forget to advertise the show, old man,” he continued turning to St. John, “and, if I may, will book to-day fortnight for a sitting. I rather enjoy having my portrait taken, and don’t mind promising to become a regular customer. I think I can bring some others as well.”

“Thanks awfully,” answered St. John. “It will be good for me if I can introduce some fresh customers. I have posted the old man a card. Wouldn’t it be a huge joke if I had the honour of photographing my own father?”

Jill made a little grimace, and then the three of them laughed uproariously till Markham, raising his glass on high, drank to the health and prosperity of bride and bridegroom, and confusion to their enemies.

“It is rather unfortunate having enemies at the outset of one’s married life, don’t you think?” observed Jill a little wistfully.

“Well, I don’t know; I always fancy an enemy or two enhance, by comparison, the value of one’s friends.”

“Yes, perhaps—if one has friends.”

“You cannot persuade me that you will not find plenty as you go through life,” Markham answered gallantly.

“They are a long time coming,” she rejoined with a smile, “but that is generally the case where money is scarce, isn’t it? And Jack and I are horribly poor. We are going to live over the shop, you know, in three rooms and a kitchen. We are lucky to get so many; old Thompkins—”

“My dear Jill,” interposed her husband, “you must really learn to speak more respectfully of the head of the firm.”

“Old Thompkins,” went on Jill imperturbably, “has only two. But then, of course, he’s a bachelor. I think I shall flirt with him! it might be a stroke of business, eh?”

Markham and St. John both laughed.

“You’re all right,” ejaculated the former. “You can safely leave yourself in your wife’s hands; it is not difficult to foresee that old Thompkins will be speedily bowled out.”

“He might be a misogynist,” suggested Jill.

“They are the easiest to get over because they imagine themselves invulnerable,” he replied. “I knew one once, but he married long ago. I forgot to ask him to explain the inconsistency, but it seems to have answered very well.”

“I’m glad of that,” said Jill gravely. Then catching his eye she smiled. “It would have been such a strong point against us if he had found it a mistake after all,” she explained.

He smiled too. There was something about St. John’s small wife that unconsciously attracted him; he could not help thinking what a capital friend she would make if a fellow were in trouble and in need of advice, though why he should arrive at such a conclusion he could not guess; so far they had exchanged nothing but very slight commonplaces.

“I feel I must contradict you there,” he said. “Had he found it a mistake it would most probably have been his fault; people with decided principles are generally difficult.”

“Don’t,” cried Jill, “you make me nervous. Jack may have decided principles for aught I know—he’s got a decided temper, and I’m horribly afraid Ilfracombe will make it worse.”

“So you propose spending the week at Ilfracombe?”

“Yes. I stayed there with my father once while he painted the Coast, so Jack is taking me there for auld lang syne.”

“It’s bracing,” struck in St. John, with a commendable determination to have nothing sad, not even reminiscences, on his wedding day. “Any place would do me, but the little woman really wants setting up.”

“You will be putting up at the ‘Ilfracombe,’ I suppose?” observed Mr Markham, conversationally.

“My dear fellow,” returned St. John, “you don’t seem to quite realise our position. We belong to the working-class, and will have to hunt out cheap rooms when we get there.”

“Ah! Well, diggings are more convenient in many ways, and more private, too.” And Mr Markham, raising his wineglass to his lips, drained it quickly, as though he were swallowing something beside Heidsieck, as no doubt he was.

Chapter Twelve.

Cheap apartments are not easily obtainable at watering places in the summer, that is apartments which combine cheapness with a certain amount of comfort. It was Jill who pointed out the likeliest locality to search in, and who finally discovered what they wanted after many fruitless enquiries. They did not suit St. John’s taste, however much they might his pocket. He would have pronounced them impossible at once had not Jill firmly maintained that they would do. She had had to study economy so much all her life that she was easily pleased, and really considered the rooms quite good enough for what they required.

“They are,” she observed cheerfully as soon as they were alone together, “clean and comfortable. To me, after my old attic, they are more—they are luxurious. And the air is perfectly delightful.”

St. John glanced round the tiny sitting-room with its cheap saddle-bag suite, and uncompromisingly hard sofa, and endeavoured to see things from her point of view, but with no very marked success. He was losing sight of the romance of poverty, in the realisation of its sordidness. He hated cheap lodgings and all their attendant discomforts, and his dissatisfaction was written plainly on his face.

“It might have been worse,” he answered disparagingly.

Jill bit her lip and turned to look out of the window. He followed her example, and his discontent increased.

“Not much of an outlook on somebody’s bean patch,” he grumbled. “Deuce of a nuisance we didn’t go nearer the sea.”

“Sea view apartments are beyond our figure,” she returned. “Besides you ought not to want any outlook, nor anything else except me.”

St. John’s ill-humour vanished, and he smiled as he put his arm round her shoulders and drew her nearer to his side.

“I don’t,” he asseverated.

“Then what are you grumbling at?”

“I wasn’t; I was only wishing that things were a little nicer for you.”

“That’s very kind of you, dear, but you might wait until I complain before you begin throwing a damper on things. I think that everything is lovely, only—who is to manage the landlady, Jack? I’m sure I daren’t; she looks as if she would stick on the extras. We must do our own marketing, and she won’t like that, I suppose.”

St. John looked uneasy.

“You always said,” he remarked in a reminiscent manner, “that you would never allow your husband to interfere in domestic concerns; it wasn’t a man’s work.”

“Well, you are a coward,” cried Jill; “big men generally are. And she’s only a little woman, not any bigger than I.”

“Little women are so vindictive,” he retorted. “I shouldn’t have minded how big she had been, but I did mind the way in which she looked us over and said, ‘You’ll have breakfast at eight-thirty, I suppose? I can let you have some butter that I’ve got in house.’ Eight-thirty is such a commonplace plebeian hour, and sums up one’s social status so exactly, and why couldn’t she say in ‘the’ house?”

“Oh! don’t be so ridiculous,” replied Jill, “she is a Devonshire woman, of course, which makes a difference. But I don’t want her butter; I’m sure it isn’t good and that’s why she is anxious to get rid of it.”

“Then why didn’t you tell her so instead of saying thank you?”

“I hadn’t the moral courage to,” Jill admitted frankly. “I don’t know why you didn’t help me out. If you were half a man you wouldn’t allow me to be worried on my honeymoon.”

“It’s my honeymoon too,” protested St. John. “I don’t see why I should be worried either. Jill, dear, run and put your hat on we can’t stay all the evening in this pokey room. Let’s go out catering for to-morrow and have a peep at the sea.”

So with a laugh Jill went to do his bidding and together they sallied forth like a pair of children, or two sea-side trippers who having come for a week’s holiday, intend making the most of their time. They turned their footsteps towards the sea, and sauntered along the steep winding path up the cliff for the sake of the view, and the breezes, and to catch sight of the little paddle steamers passing in the distance. They talked a great deal of nonsense, and St. John painted a golden future as background to the rosy present till Jill almost believed that the insignificant firm of Thompkins and Co. was the gilded gate to fortune, and Jack’s the lucky hand to hold the key. Markham’s name cropped up in the course of conversation. St. John introduced it, as he had the owner, unexpectedly, and apropos of nothing that had gone before.