out to do so much better, so much more graphically than it had ever been done before, that inevitably she attracted disciples. But Henrietta's grievance went deeper. She denied her any vestige of personal charm, and at the same time insisted fiercely that she was an unscrupulous woman, in that she used her personal charm to accomplish her aims: her aims, in Henrietta's eyes, being the ousting of the secretary from her position of trust and possible succession to the headship. Henrietta did not realise that it was herself, far more than Clare, who was jeopardising that position. Though there was no system of prefecture among the staff, she had come to consider herself responsible for the junior mistresses, encouraging them to bring complaints to her, rather than to the head of the school. Old Miss Marsham, little as she liked relaxing her hold on the reins, dreaded, as old age must, the tussle that would inevitably follow any insistence on her prerogatives, and had acquiesced; yet with reservations. Had one of the younger mistresses rebelled and carried her grievance to the higher court, Miss Vigers' eyes might have been opened; but as yet no one had challenged her self-assumed supremacy. Clare, who might have done so, cared little who supervised the boarders or was supreme in the matter of time-table and commissariat. Her interest lay in the actual work, in the characters and possibilities of the workers. There she brooked no interference, and Henrietta attempted little, for when she did she was neatly and completely routed.

[9]

But the more chary Henrietta grew of interfering with Clare's activities, the more she realised that it was her duty (she would not have said pleasure) to supervise the younger women. She had a gift that was almost genius of appearing among them at awkward moments. If a child were proving refractory and victory hanging in the balance, Miss Vigers would surely choose that moment to knock at the class-room door, and, politely refusing to inconvenience the embarrassed novice, wait, all-observant, until the scene[10] ended, before explaining her errand. Later in the day the young mistress would be button-holed, and the i's and t's of her errors of judgment dotted and crossed. Those who would not submit to tutelage she contrived to render so uncomfortable that, sooner or later, they retired in favour of temperaments more sheeplike or more thick-skinned.

[10]

To Alwynne Durand, at present under grave suspicion of tampering with Clare Hartill's literature class, she had been from the first inimical. She had been engaged without 

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