Jill's lip curled.

"I am not a t.i.tian," she answered.

"Perhaps not," continued Miss Bolton in a I-know-better tone of voice.

"Anyway Jack says that you are terribly clever. He considers your paintings superior to many of those on the line this year."

"Mr St. John is very kind but I am afraid his criticism wouldn't avail me much. Will you tell me how far advanced you are. Of course you have studied drawing before?"

"Oh, yes! And painting also. My friends considered it a pity for me to drop it altogether with my other studies so I thought that perhaps I would take it up again. Like music it is a very useful accomplishment 'pour pa.s.ser le temps,' you know. I am considered fairly good at it."

"Ah!" responded Jill with uncomplimentary vagueness. "And what do you wish to go in for? Mr St. John is studying the figure--"

Miss Bolton interrupted with a little scream.

"How horrid of him," she cried. "Not the nude, Miss Erskine, surely?"

Jill stared.

"Well, at present," she said, "he is drawing the human foot in outline, and it certainly hasn't a stocking on."

"But you don't teach--that sort of thing, do you?"

"It is usually taught in Art Schools," Jill answered frigidly. "So far as I am concerned I have only just commenced teaching. You do not wish to go in for the figure then?"

"Certainly not; flowers are my forte; I adore nature."

Apparently she did not consider that the human form reckoned in this category, and certainly her own, thanks to the aid of the costumiere, had deviated somewhat from the natural laws of contour; nevertheless nature is at the root of our being and no matter how we attempt to disguise and ignore the fact she will not be denied. It was on the tip of Jill's tongue to remark that flowers alone did not const.i.tute nature but she restrained herself, and endeavoured to check her increasing irritability.

"You are quite right not to go in for the figure," she said; "feeling as you do about it nature becomes coa.r.s.e, and artificiality--or shall we say the conventional customs of circ.u.mstances?--preferable. Will you come into the studio?"

It just flashed through her mind to wonder what this young lady whose modesty was only to be equalled by Isobel's would say to the models when she saw them, and it must be confessed that the thought of them caused her a certain malicious satisfaction, but when she held aside the curtain for Miss Bolton to enter she perceived to her unspeakable astonishment that all the models had been carefully draped with the dust covers in which they were kept encased when not in use, and which she had herself taken off that morning, and had folded and placed on the shelf. She glanced towards St. John in wrathful indignation, but St.

John was busy measuring the length of the big toe in the copy and comparing it with his own drawing, which, taking into consideration the fact that he was not supposed to be making an enlargement, was not altogether satisfactory.

"May I enquire," asked Jill with relentless irony, "the meaning of all these preparations? Was it fear of the models taking cold that induced you to cover them so carefully or a desire to study drapery, Mr St.

John?"

She paused expectantly, but St. John made no sign of having heard beyond an alarming increase of colour in the back of his neck, a mute appeal to her generosity, which she was not, however, in the mood to heed. Miss Bolton watched her in bewildered fascination, astonished at her displeasure and unable to understand the reason thereof. So entirely unprepared was she for what followed that it was probably a greater shock than if she had walked straight in amongst the models, it could not certainly have embarra.s.sed her more. Jill, during the pause, had approached one of the figures, and now catching impatiently at the covering drew it off to the scandalised consternation of the new pupil, who, without waiting for more, burst into a very unexpected flood of tears, and fled precipitately from the room. Jill stared after her open-mouthed, and for a moment there was dead silence. Then St. John pushed back his chair and rose noisily to his feet.

"Con--excuse me," he corrected himself, "but I think that I had better go and see after my cousin."

He caught up his hat with marked annoyance, and Jill stood gaping now at him still too astonished for words. She watched him go in silence, and then sat down on the twill covered box and drew a long breath--a sort of letting off steam in order to prevent an explosion.

"Well of all the inconceivable, incomparable, extraordinary, and revolting imbeciles that I have ever come across that girl is the worst," she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "Thank heaven that my mind is not of that grovelling order which sees vulgarity in nature and coa.r.s.eness where there should only be refinement. What agonies such people must endure at times; they can never go to a gallery that's certain, and I suppose they would blush at sight of a doll. Oh! my dear saint, why ever did you bring such a person here, I wonder?"

And then she sat and stared at his empty chair and saw in retrospection the expression of vexed reproach in his eyes as he had risen to his feet, their mute enquiry.

"Could you not have spared me this? Was it necessary?"

And in equally mute response her heart made answer,--

"Not necessary perhaps; but I'm not a bit sorry that it happened all the same."

CHAPTER FIVE.

Jill did not antic.i.p.ate 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--"

"_In_decency, 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 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 a.s.sumption 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 embarra.s.sment 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 not particularly distressed herself. He sat down and work commenced as usual.

St. John was getting on more quickly than his teacher had imagined that he would. He was not likely to ever make an artist but still he progressed very fairly in amateur fashion. His eye unfortunately was not true; he could never see when a thing was out of drawing, but he was always ready to listen to advice, and correct his work under supervision. His greatest fault was a desire to get on too quickly; and Jill had to a.s.sert her authority on more than one occasion to restrain him, and keep his ambition in check.

One day, several weeks after the Bolton episode, he suggested that it was time he commenced painting; he was tired of black and white. He was then drawing from the bust of Clytie, and had only just begun working from the cast. Jill was not in a good temper that morning--things had not been prospering with her lately--and so St. John's ill-timed suggestion met with scant consideration.

"You want to run before you can walk," she returned with ill-humoured sarcasm. "Some people are like that. I knew of a girl once who was learning riding and insisted on cantering the second time she went out.

The result was not altogether satisfactory; for it left her sitting in the middle of the road. Last week I yielded to your insane desire to attempt Clytie; the attempt is a failure; and so you want to begin painting."

"Well," he answered not exactly pleased by her manner of refusing his pet.i.tion. "I certainly should like to vary the monotony. I don't see why I shouldn't paint one day a week and draw on the other."

"That's not my system," replied Jill, and the curt finality of tone and manner irritated him exceedingly. He felt like saying 'd.a.m.n your system,' and only refrained by biting fiercely at his moustache, and jerking back his drawing-board with such vehemence that, coming into violent contact with the cast from which he had been working, and which stood on a box in the centre of the table, it upset the whole erection, and with a terrible crash Jill's favourite model was shivered into fragments. Jill, herself, flew into such a rage as baffles description, and, alas to have to record it! springing forward boxed St. John's ears.

It was by no means a lady-like thing to do; but it seemed to occasion her some slight relief. She was positively quivering with pa.s.sion, and stood glaring at the offender as though he had been guilty of a crime.

St. John flushed crimson, and as if fearful of further a.s.sault dodged behind the model of the Venus de Medici. He could hardly be reproached with taking refuge behind a woman's petticoats; anyone knowing the figure could vouch for the impracticability of that; but he felt decidedly safer screened by the white limbs which had so scandalised his cousin, and betrayed no disposition to emerge again in a hurry; he was very big and Jill was very little but he most certainly felt afraid of her just then.

"How clumsy of you!" she cried. "I wouldn't have had it happen for the world--I believe you did it on purpose."

"I did not," he protested indignantly. "How can you say such a thing?