He felt irritated with her that she was so quiet, so reserved, and so thoroughly self-possessed. He had expected something different; his ward had spoken of her as a horrid, designing, low-minded creature, his son had told him plainly only the night before that she was the one woman he loved, or ever could love; he had put the two descriptions together, and had pictured something handsome and sophisticated, bold perhaps, and necessarily charming, but nothing like what he found; not an ill-dressed, white-faced, ordinary-looking child-woman, whose great grey eyes watched him with such wistful, apprehensive, piteous anxiety that he turned away from their scrutiny with ill-concealed vexation. "I have come on an unpleasant errand," he went on, "and naturally feel rather upset. But these unpleasant things must happen so long as men are imprudent and women over anxious. Have you no one belonging to you?--no one to advise you?" "Thank you," Jill answered drawing herself up proudly, "I do not want advice." "So most young people think," he said irascibly; "but they do well to accept it all the same. My son has been studying under you for some time, I believe?" "Yes," replied Jill, "since last January." "And have you any more pupils?" "Not now; I had one other for a short time. But the locality is against my forming an extensive connection." "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 assure 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.