Chapter Five.

Jill did not anticipate the return of either of her pupils that morning—did not, indeed, expect Miss Bolton to return at all; in both of which surmises she proved correct. St. John had been obliged to hail a four-wheeler and drive with his cousin home, and a most unpleasant drive she made it; it was as much as he could do to sit quiet under her shower of tearful reproaches. He ought to have known better than to have taken her to such a low place. She might have guessed after having seen her what sort of creature the girl was. It would have been much better to have acted as she wished to in the first place—given some suitable donation or commissioned her for a painting; that would have been quite sufficient; it wasn’t her fault that the stupid girl got in front of her wheel, etc: etc: St. John said,—

“Shut up, Evie; don’t talk rot.” But when you tell some people to shut up it has a contrary effect and serves as an incentive to talk more, it was so with Miss Bolton. She was not violent because it was not her nature to be demonstrative, nor was she in the slightest degree vulgar; but her command over the English language could not fail to excite the astonishment of her listener; to quote St. John’s euphonism, “it made him sick.”

“I daresay,” retorted Miss Bolton disagreeably; “my remarks generally have a nauseating effect upon you, I notice; yet that disgraceful girl without any sense of decency—”

“Indecency, you mean,” he interrupted. “You are very horrid,” sobbed his cousin, subsiding into tears again, and St. John devoutly wished that he had held his peace.

The rest of the journey was very watery, and at its termination he felt too demoralised to do anything except go for a stroll; the house with Miss Bolton in it was too small for him. Miss Bolton was Mr St. John senior’s ward; she was a kind of fifth cousin twice removed, which was the nearest kinship that she could claim on earth—that is to say with anyone worth claiming kinship with. There were cousins who kept a haberdashery, and spoke of the ‘heiress’ with a big ‘h’ but Evie Bolton didn’t know them; though according to the genealogical tree they were only once removed, but that remove had been so distant that it made all the difference in the world. Mr St. John, senior, both admired and loved his ward, Mr St. John, junior, was expected to follow the paternal example, and Miss Bolton, herself, was quite willing to present her big, good-looking cousin with her hand, and her fortune, and as much of her heart as she could conveniently spare. It would 

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