much longer than I intended; but that was quite an accident, and not my fault at all. I hope you will excuse all this inconvenience.”

“Don’t mention it,” he exclaimed, “the inconvenience is greater for you than for me.”

He glanced round as he spoke and watched her while she began to arrange the sticks.

Something struck him as unusual about her, and after a time he discovered what it was, she was working with one hand, the right one, and on the left wrist was a very neat and very new looking bandage. In a moment all his resentment against her vanished, the caricature was forgotten, and with it her former ungraciousness of manner. He recalled how pale and weary she had looked on entering, and how he had endeavoured to embarrass her by showing her what he had found. He rose and joined her where she knelt upon the hearth.

“Excuse me,” he began in a slightly apologetic tone, “I see that you have hurt your wrist; won’t you let me do that for you?”

“Thank you,” she answered, “but I can manage very well; it is nothing—much.”

The much was a concession to conscience, and was thrown in with an unwilling jerk at the end. Then he did a very bold thing; he went down on his knees beside her and took the sticks out of her hand.

“I’m a don hand at building up fires,” he said; “there’s never any difficulty about my fires burning.”

“I should think not,” replied Jill, watching the reckless way in which he threw on the sticks; “a fire that wouldn’t burn with all that wood ought to be ashamed of itself. Mr St. John, please; you’ll ruin me.”

St. John desisted then and put on coals instead, piling them up with an equally lavish hand; then he struck a match and set light to the erection which was soon blazing and cracking merrily.

“I told you so,” he cried triumphantly looking up at her as she stood a little behind him regarding with a somewhat rueful smile the very unnecessary extravagance. “That will be as hot as blazes before long. Come a little nearer; you look cold.”

He fetched her a chair and Jill sat down and held her hands to the warmth. She was cold—cold, and tired, and shaken. Her head ached badly too, and all the fight seemed taken out of her; she could only sit there enjoying the rest, experiencing the pleasurable novelty of being waited upon, and of having someone to talk to again.

“And now,” exclaimed St. John, taking his stand before her with his grimy hands held at awkward angles from his clothes, “tell me how you managed to hurt yourself. Is it a sprain?”

“I don’t know what it is, a mere scratch, I think,” she answered. “It happened when I was out this morning.”

“Indeed! an accident then?” His tone was sympathetic and interested. Jill expanded further.

“Yes,” she replied, sinking her chin in the palm of her right hand and resting her elbow on her knee. “A female horror on wheels rode over me.”

“What, a cyclist?” Jill nodded.

“You don’t approve of biking then?”

“Oh! I don’t know,” she answered. “I suppose I should if I had one of my own. It isn’t the machine that I’m disparaging now but the rider. Some people seem to think that the metropolis belongs to them, and that you ought to apply to them for the privilege of residing in it. She was one of that sort.”

“But it was not purposely done?”

“No, I suppose not, as it occasioned her the great inconvenience of stepping off into the mud, but it was sheer carelessness all the same. I was crossing the road, and it was a case of being run over by a hansom, or biked over; I preferred the latter.”

“Did you find out who she was?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied Jill, feeling in her pocket. “I have her card. She was very gracious, and wished me to apply to her if I wanted money, hinting delicately at a doctor’s fee, or something of the sort. I took her card out of curiosity, and walked into the nearest chemists’, having the satisfaction of hearing her say to someone as I went, that she would see that I had compensation, poor girl! so stupid to have run right in front of her wheel.”

“Prig!” muttered St. John.

“There’s the card. You can throw it into the fire when you’ve done with it; I shall make no application.”

He took it from her, glanced at it, and then gave vent to an involuntary exclamation of surprise. Jill looked up.

“You know the name?” she questioned.

“Rather!”

“A friend of yours?”

“Well—yes, I suppose so; she’s a sort of connection.”

Jill compressed her mouth, and stared fixedly at the fire; the situation was a little awkward.

“Being a relation of yours,” she began in a slightly strained voice, “I’m sorry that I said what I did, but—well, you yourself, called her a prig, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” he admitted, and then he tore the card in two, angrily, and threw it into the flames.

“She couldn’t, perhaps, have avoided the accident,” Jill went on, “and she meant to kind, but she doesn’t possess much tact.”

“No,” he agreed, “she doesn’t. You must allow me to apologise for her. After all there is some slight excuse for her gaucherie; she has been spoilt with a superabundance of this world’s goods—quarter of a million of money is rather inclined to blunt the finer sensibilities.”

“Quarter of a million!” gasped Jill. “Oh, dear me, I would like the chance of having my finer sensibilities blunted.”

She laughed a little, but St. John was looking so gloomy that her mirth died away almost as soon as it had risen.

“Come!” she said, jumping up. “I will get you some water to wash your hands, and then we must go to work; it will never do to waste a whole morning like this.”

He allowed her to go without hindrance, and when quite alone stood glaring at the charred embers of Miss Bolton’s card.

“Just like Evie,” he soliloquised. “That girl is always making a blithering idiot of herself, though I—H’m! I wonder what little Miss Erskine would say if she knew that I—”

He broke off abruptly and kicked savagely at an inoffensive lump of coal lying near to his boot left there by his own carelessness when making the fire.

“Oh, hang it!” he mentally ejaculated, “what a confounded ass I am.”

“The water and soap are on the table,” said Jill’s voice at his elbow, such a small friendly voice, so very different from her former tone—the tone that was always associated in his mind in connection with her—that he turned and faced her involuntarily, looking down at her with a smile.

“It is awfully good of you to trouble,” he said. “I am afraid that I and my relations are putting you to a lot of bother.”

“By no means,” she answered, with a return to her former distance of voice and manner. “When a student of mine soils his hands in my service, the least I can do is to provide him with the means of cleansing them again.”

St. John immediately retreated within himself, and taking the towel which she offered him, walked over to the table. When he had finished his