lips widened until it broadened into a laugh.

“If all your relations possessed the same amount of tact,” she soliloquised, “what a model family yours would be.”

She laid her face against the flowers and laughed again, a soft quiet laugh full of enjoyment.

“What a bright patch of sunshine in the old studio,” she continued, smilingly caressing the blossoms, “and what a bright patch of sunshine in somebody’s heart, my dear saint, what a warm, brilliant, altogether delightful patch to be sure.”

Chapter Four.

On the next occasion that St. John made his appearance at the studio there was a visible constraint in his manner as there was also in Miss Erskine’s. Jill had rehearsed a grateful little speech to deliver on his entry, but when their hands met there was silence; the speech, like many another rehearsed effect, had taken to itself wings, and all she could find to say after an awkward pause was,—

“Good morning. The weather seems to have turned milder, doesn’t it?”

And St. John’s remarkably original answer was,—

“Really! Do you think so?”

And then they commenced work. Yet St. John knew that she had received his flowers, and was pleased with them before even he caught sight of them, withered and dead now, in their basket on the window ledge; and she was equally aware that he understood all that she felt and yet had failed to express in words. The words came later when the sudden fit of embarrassment had worn off, and the lesson was nearing its termination, and there was no doubt as to the genuineness of her pleasure when she did thank him. She was sitting in his seat correcting his work, and he was standing over her with his hands on the back of the chair. When she said.

“It was more than kind of you, Mr St. John, to send me those lovely flowers,” he let his hands slip forward a little until they touched the sleeves of her gown. Jill, unconscious of the slight contact, continued gravely,—

“I can’t very well tell you how I enjoyed them because you could hardly understand how anyone loving such luxuries and yet unaccustomed to them could appreciate them. It was like a peep of sunshine on a rainy day to me.”

St. John drew himself up and stood with his hands clasped behind him. There was something 

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