be difficult to ascertain whether St. John appreciated her generosity as it deserved. He had appeared thoroughly acquiescent up to the present when a possible engagement had been mooted by his father, but had so far refrained from putting his luck to the test. But in Mr St. John, senior’s, eyes the affair was a settled fact, and had anyone suggested the probability of its coming to nothing he would have scouted the idea.

The following Friday when St. John entered the Art School he found a very subdued little figure waiting for him—the old style of Jill with her hair tied with ribbon, and the big pinafore over her shabby frock. But not altogether the old style either; there was no attempt at dignity here, no self-sufficiency of manner but that she was so thoroughly composed he would have thought her nervous. She shook hands with a slightly deprecating smile, and remarked interrogatively,—

“Miss Bolton has not come? I am sorry.”

“No,” he answered with an assumption at indifference which he was far from feeling. “I told you art was a temporary whim with her, and I fancy the stairs rather appalled her; she is not very strong.”

His desire to spare her embarrassment was altogether too palpable. Jill turned away to hide a smile, or a blush, or something feminine which she did not wish him to perceive. He watched her in some amusement and waited for her to break the silence. He would have liked to have helped her out, but could think of nothing to say.

“I behaved foolishly last Tuesday;” she remarked at length, speaking with her back impolitely turned towards him, and a mixture of shame and triumph on the face which he could not see. “I lost my temper which was ill bred; and,” turning round and laughingly openly, “I’m afraid that I’m not so sorry as I ought to be. Don’t,” putting up her hand as he essayed to speak, “go on making excuses—your very apologies but condemn me further. It was most ungracious on my part after Miss Bolton’s condescension in coming; yet how was I to know that she was so supersensitive?”

“I ought to have warned you,” he answered. “But never mind now; there is very little harm done, only I am afraid that you have lost a pupil.”

“And isn’t that highly deplorable,” cried Jill, “considering how few I have?”

But St. John was not to be drawn into any expression of sympathy; personally he felt no inconvenience, and he shrewdly suspected that Miss Erskine was 

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