"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 const.i.tute 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 a.s.sumed 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 circ.u.mstances are almost as dest.i.tute 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 ap.r.o.n, 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 pa.s.sing 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 fiance 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 a.s.sistance 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 a.s.sistance 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 pa.s.sed. 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.