of London, employed and
unemployed.

CHAPTER XIII.

MR. ST. FOY'S AND THE MISSES STONE'S.

There was a second and large portion of Rose's life which belonged to
her art classes, and to the classes in which she was one of the teachers
and not one of the taught. In the art classes Hester Jennings's
influence still dominated over Rose. In spite of Mr. St. Foy's
professional qualifications, for which Hester had vouched, he had not so
potent a personality as that possessed by one of his favourite pupils.
He was tall, thin, gentleman-like, and delicate-looking, with a habit of
languidly winking his eyes every second or two, as if they were weary of
the trying sights of this world. He was kind to Rose in his courteous
way, but she would not have been certain either of his ability to judge
her work or of his honest opinion of it, if it had not been for what
Hester told her.

There were fifty pupils among whom she and Hester ranked. These occupied
the desks, worked at the easels, copied from copies, from the round
or--height of promotion--from well-known models attached to the
institution. There was the old market woman who obligingly sat alike for
wicked old hags and doting grandmothers. There was the athletic young
porter, off duty, who was a brigand or a pilot as occasion served.

The pupils were of various styles, idle and chattering, picturesque and
sentimental, industrious, commonplace, but the most of them were
variations on that last accepted version of the lady artist--the
individual girl who aims at being independent and natural to the verge
of harmless lawlessness and Philistinism--strange reaction from
aestheticism. There were many Hester Jennings's though none so pronounced
as Hester.

The Misses Stone's select boarding-school carried Rose twice a week into
another region, where the wind did not blow so freely and the air was a
trifle stifling. Sometimes she wondered if the Misses Stone knew the
tone of a large proportion of the young lady artists at Mr. St. Foy's
classes--not that Rose herself could see anything absolutely wrong in
it--whether they would care to have an assistant drawing-mistress from
those half-emancipated, more than half insubordinate ranks. However,
Rose's appointment was not in any great danger of being cancelled. She
had involuntarily become doubly careful in her dress and demeanour
lately, and she discovered that the Misses Stone were old and intimate
friends of Mrs. Jennings