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 ejaculated. "Thank heaven that my mind is not of that grovelling order which sees vulgarity in nature and coarseness 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 anticipate 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.