"It looks very well where it is," he answered coolly. "But I think I'll give over trying to draw it for a time; I can't catch that sadly contemplative, sweetly scornful expression at all; I make a sneer of it which is diabolical. Don't insist, please; because it makes me nervous just to look at her." That was the beginning of things--at any rate the perceptible commencement; though it might have begun with the flowers as Isobel had insinuated. Never a word did St. John utter that Jill could possibly have turned or twisted into a betrayal of the growing regard which she felt in her heart he entertained for her, and never a sign did Jill make that she understood, or in any way reciprocated his unspoken liking. She knew that he loved her by instinct, and the knowledge made her glad, so that her life was no longer lonely, nor the occasional privations, the incessant work, the petty, carking, almost daily worries so hard to bear. Life was one long pleasant day-dream; though sometimes Miss Bolton "biked" through the dreaming, and then it became a night-mare, and Jill was consumed with a fierce burning jealousy that lasted until a new-born, audacious, delicious conceit--her woman's intuition--assured her that poor and insignificant though she was St. John was far more fond of her than he would ever be of his pretty, elegant, and wealthy cousin. CHAPTER SIX. St. John had attended Miss Erskine's studio for two quarters, and was now into the third. He was still her sole pupil; though she had had another student, a long-legged girl of fifteen who had attended for three weeks and then been taken away in a hurry because her mother had discovered that Miss Erskine was very young, and had, besides her daughter, only one other pupil--_a man_--and no chaperone. She wrote Miss Erskine very plainly on the subject of the impropriety of her conduct, and gave her a good deal of advice, but omitted to enclose the fee. Jill showed the letter to St. John as the best way of explaining his fellow-student's absence, and St. John laughed over it immoderately; he was so glad that the long-legged girl was gone. "It's rather rough on you though," he remarked as he returned the missive which Jill put into her pocket to keep for a curiosity. "If you get another pupil of that description you'll have to get rid of me, that's certain. Poor little snub-nosed Flossie! I hope we didn't demoralise her altogether. How I do detest the respectable British matron, don't you?" "No," answered Jill. "I detest the vulgar, narrow-minded order though, like the writer of this letter. That poor child! I used to think her a giggling little idiot. She did giggle, and she wasn't very wise; but she is greatly to be commiserated all the same."