He looked round superciliously as though he wondered how anyone could study anything in so mean a place; no doubt he considered that his son’s explanation had been merely a plausible excuse.
“Yes,” Jill answered, and that was all.
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?”