"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 antic.i.p.ated 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.