"And you and my son work here alone two mornings a week?" he continued staring hard at her under his bushy brows, "_Entirely_ alone?"

"Yes," she answered, and his tone brought the blood to her pale cheeks in a great wave of colour; but she looked him steadily in the face notwithstanding. It did not seem to occur to her to resent this cross examination; she just listened to his queries and answered them as though he had a right to catechise her, and she must of necessity reply.

"Do you consider that altogether discreet, Miss Erskine?" he enquired.

Jill flushed painfully again, and her breath came more quickly. It is so easy to wound another's feelings that sometimes the inflicter of so much pain hardly realises the anguish that he causes.

"Mr St. John," the girl said quickly, speaking as though she were anxious to say what she wished to, before her suddenly acquired courage deserted her again, "I don't quite understand what it is you want with me, and I can hardly believe that you have come here with no other intention than that of insulting me. Your last question was an insult.

Do you think that I am in a position to be discreet entirely dependent as I am on my own exertions? Art with the many does not pay well. But I can a.s.sure you had your son been other than he is--a gentleman--I should not, as you so graphically put it, have worked here with him two mornings a week entirely alone."

Mr St. John was rather taken aback; she was evidently not such a child as she looked.

"Excuse me," he said, "but you mistake me altogether. I know my son thoroughly, and though I have never had the privilege of meeting you before to-day, yet once seeing is quite sufficient to disabuse my mind of any prejudice I may have entertained towards you. In speaking of indiscretion I was thinking entirely of outside criticism."

Jill smiled faintly, contemptuously, incredulously. She had him at a disadvantage, and the knowledge gave her a gratifying sense of superiority.

"I am too insignificant a unit in this little world to excite criticism, captious or the reverse," she answered. "I thought, myself, at first that it wouldn't do, but have since been humbled into learning that my actions pa.s.s unheeded by the outside world. A great many actions of bigger people than myself pa.s.s unnoticed if they were only big-minded enough to realise it. Humanity does not spend its time solely in watching the doings of its neighbour; that is left for the little minds who have nothing more important to occupy themselves with. But you didn't come here to warn me of my indiscretion. Would you mind telling me what the 'unpleasant errand' is?"

"No," he answered bluntly coming to the point. "I was merely anxious not to be too abrupt. I want to induce my son to give up coming here, and I can't persuade him. Will you?"

He did not look at her, but drawing a cheque-book from his pocket with unnecessary display placed it upon the table. Jill watched him comprehensively, and the blood seemed to freeze in her veins as she did so.

"Why," she asked, and could have bitten out her tongue because the word choked in her throat, "why should he give up coming?"

"This is absurd," exclaimed Mr St. John. "Let us give over fencing and understand one another. My son is infatuated--he generally is, by the way, it is a failing of his,"--Jill felt this to be untrue even while he said it, but she made no sign. "You, of course, are quite aware of his infatuation? But, Miss Erskine, he is a beggar; he has nothing in the world save what I allow him."

"How degrading!" cried Jill. "I should have credited him with possessing more manhood than that. Everyone should be independent who can be."

He smiled and tapped the cheque-book with his fingers. He fancied that she would be sensible.

"It would not be wise to marry a pauper, would it?" he queried. "For a man who marries against his relative's wishes when he looks to them for every penny, would be a pauper, without doubt."

"No," Jill answered with unnatural quietness, "it would not be wise. I don't think anyone would contradict that."

"You would not yourself, for instance?"

"Most certainly I should not."

"Now we begin to understand one another," he resumed almost cheerfully.

He had greatly feared a scene; but she was so absolutely unemotional that he felt relieved.

"Personally, you will understand I should have no objection to you as a daughter-in-law at all, only I have made other arrangements for my son, arrangements so highly advantageous that it would be the height of folly to reject them as he proposes doing. He must marry his cousin, the young lady whose acquaintance, I learn, you have already made--"

"What! The young lady with a soul above nature?" interrupted Jill, thoroughly astonished, and for the first time off her guard. "Oh, he'll never marry her."

"Indeed he will; there is nothing else for him to do. You forget that I can cut him off without a shilling, and will do so if he does not conform to my wishes."

"Yes," Jill acquiesced as though she were discussing something entirely disconnected with herself, "Of course, I had forgotten that."

"The long and the short of the matter is this, Miss Erskine, if you insist upon encouraging my son in his mad infatuation you ruin his prospects and do yourself no good; for I believe that you agreed that you would not marry a pauper?"

"No," she answered, staring stonily out of the window with a gaze which saw nothing. "I would not marry a pauper; I don't think it would be wise, and I don't think it would be right to do so."

"A very sensible decision," returned Mr St. John, senior, approvingly.

"You have taken a great weight off my mind, my dear young lady; and I am greatly indebted to you. How greatly you alone are in a position to say," and he tapped the cheque-book again with rea.s.suring delicacy, but Jill did not notice the action and for once failed to follow the drift of his speech. A dull, heavy, aching despair had fallen upon her which she could not shake off. She seemed hardly to be listening to him now and only imperfectly comprehended his meaning.

"I am to understand then," Mr St. John resumed, straightening himself, and looking about him with an urbane benevolence that was most irritating, "that you will work in conjunction with us? Disillusion him a little, and--"

"Oh, stop!" cried Jill, with the first real display of feeling that she had shown throughout the interview. "I cannot bear it. Do you think that because I have adopted art as a profession that I have turned into a lay figure and have no heart at all? You have robbed existence of its only pleasure so far as I am concerned. Can you not spare me the rest?

I won't impoverish him by marrying him but I am glad that he loves me, and I won't try to lessen his love--I can't do that."

He regarded her with angry impatience, frowning heavily the while. It was a try on--a diplomatic ruse, he considered; he had wondered rather at her former impa.s.siveness; but apparently she was not very quickwitted and had been unprepared.

"My dear Miss--Erskine," he exclaimed, endeavouring to adapt himself to the new mood with but little success however, "you are too sensible altogether to indulge in heroics. I don't wish to appear harsh, and I am quite certain that you have your feelings like anyone else, but there are Miss Bolton's feelings also to be taken into consideration, and, though I greatly regret having myself to announce his dishonourable behaviour, she has been engaged to my son for some months past."

Jill stared at him in dumb, unquestioning anguish. Engaged! Perhaps that had been the 'something' he wished to communicate to her. He had never, given her any reason to suppose otherwise; it had only been her vanity that had led her to imagine what she had.

"He has not behaved dishonourably," she answered with difficulty; "he has never made love to me. It was you who told me that he cared; I did not know."

He looked surprised.

"I am glad to learn that that is so," he said. "I had feared things had gone further. And now, my dear young lady, I must apologise for the intrusion, and will finish up this very unpleasant business as speedily as possible."

He opened the cheque-book and took up a pen to write with.

"You will allow me," he began; but Jill took the pen quickly and replaced it in the stand. She was white to the very lips, and trembled all over like a person with the ague.

"Go," she said hoa.r.s.ely, "before I say what I might regret all my life.

My G.o.d! what have I done or said that you should take me for a thing like that? Go, please; oh! go away at once."

CHAPTER SEVEN.

The climax had come. It had rushed upon her with an unexpectedness that was overwhelming and had left her too stunned to even think connectedly.

Only the night before she had been so full of glad expectation, and now everything seemed at an end and all the gladness vanished. She walked unsteadily back to her old seat by the window, and fingered absently the book St. John had sent. It was a new volume, and had been a gift; for he had written her name on the fly leaf. The fact had given her pleasure last night, now she wondered why he had done it, and laid the book down again wearily, all her former interest gone. There were other evidences of his gifts about the room in the shape of baskets once containing fruit and flowers. The fruit had been all eaten, and the flowers were dead; a bunch of them, fading fast, drooped in a vase upon the table; the rest, dried and discoloured, with all their beauty perished, were hidden away in Jill's little bedroom where only she could see them, and recall the pleasure they had given; and from her exalted position on on the bracket which she occupied alone, Clytie looked down white, and pure, and pensive, seeming to understand. Oh! it was hard, and cruel, and bitter,--all the more bitter, that the mistake had been her own. She drew from the bosom of her frock St. John's brief note, the note that had made her so happy, and read it again by the light of her new understanding, 'Don't worry about the lessons; I am enjoying the holiday.' Perhaps he had meant it literally and not, as she had imagined, penned the clause solely with a thoughtful desire to save her anxiety. How vain she had been!--how mad! 'I have something to say to you which will not keep.' So vague a sentence, and yet she had fancied that she had guessed his meaning rightly. He might have meant a hundred things, and what more probable than the announcement of his engagement?

Jill crouched by the window for the rest of the morning hugging this new trouble which had dwarfed all the others into insignificance. At first she was too dazed to feel anything much, then gradually the anguish of mind grew keener until it seemed unbearable, and finally exhausted itself by its own violence. After that came a lull, and then followed resentment, fierce, active, healthy resentment that left absolutely no room for any other emotion; resentment against her recent visitor, angry, contemptuous, indignant; resentment against Miss Bolton of the fiercely jealous order; but keenest of all resentment against St. John, the cold, inflexible, heartsore resentment of wounded love. He ought to have told her of his engagement; if not actually dishonourable it was mean of him to have suppressed the fact when he must have seen that he was becoming necessary to her, when he knew, too, that she was more than, under the circ.u.mstances, she should have been to him; for that he did care for her she did not doubt--infatuation his father had called it, and it might be that he was right. At any rate St. John should have left the Art School before it had grown too late. This feeling of anger acted as a tonic to Jill; it braced her nerves and put her on her mettle, so that she determined to face her trouble and conquer it, and if possible show St. John what a poor opinion she had of him. But then came the remembrance of her small debts and her poverty. It had been a bad thing for her this acquaintance with St. John; she had not relied sufficiently on herself. When he was gone the fee would cease, and she had not sold any work for weeks. The last canvas that she had been engaged upon before her illness, painting from a model St. John had employed, stood against the wall unfinished and there were others ready for sale but nowhere to dispose of them. In the afternoon she went out--there was no time for holidays now--in search of a market, and returned in the evening weary, footsore, miserable, having had no luck at all with her canva.s.ses, but--oh! the degradation to Jill's artist-soul--having been obliged to accept as the only thing going an order for half-a-dozen nightdress sachets--'pyjama bags' as the oily, leering, facetious individual who had given her the commission called them.

"There was a run on 'em," he had added, "the swells like painted satin things to keep their night-gear in."

Jill had agreed to do the work, but she looked far from happy over it, and very nearly cried as she turned to leave the shop. The facetious individual had chucked her under the chin, and told her to 'buck up,'

and he would look round and see if there wasn't something else he could find her to 'daub.' Then he winked at her, and Jill had broken away in haste fearing that these overtures would lead to an embrace. And so she reached home, and that night went early to bed, and Thursday ended unhappily even as it had begun.

The next morning when she rose, the feeling of anger was still paramount. She had suffered so keenly yesterday that she did not think it possible that she could feel any greater pain, and she found it difficult to realise yet all that this sudden breaking with St. John must mean. She steeled herself to meet her old pupil with composure though she had not yet determined upon what she should say or do. At first she had thought of writing and forbidding him ever to come to the Art School again, but had subsequently rejected this plan as impracticable; what reason had she to offer? She could not say on account of your engagement, such an excuse would have placed her in a false position, and given St. John a right to put what construction he chose upon her motive. The only thing that remained for her was to receive him, and by saying as little as possible convince him how indifferent she was, and how very determined at the same time. And at nine thirty sharp he arrived, clattering up the steep stairs like a noisy schoolboy and marching through the open door straight into the studio where Jill stood white and nervous, but outwardly calm, waiting to receive him. There was a pleased, eager, confident air about him in striking contrast to the chilling quiet of her manner, and he grasped her hand before she could prevent him with a very hearty grip of genuine sincerity.

"This is good to see you about again," he began. Then he stopped short struck by something in her face, and exclaimed anxiously. "Nothing the matter I hope, Miss Erskine?"

Jill was standing with her back to the light so that she had the advantage of him that way; but St. John's sight was good and he detected at once the suppressed agitation of her manner; though she, herself, was unaware of it there was a whole life's tragedy in the depths of her grey eyes.

"No," she answered; "nothing beyond a trifling annoyance that I have been subjected to lately, and which I have determined to put an end to for good and all. It is absurd of course and really not worth discussing, but these petty worries are even more trying than big ones."