rows of eager
faces arranged in the form of a horse-shoe. She looked upon them and
smiled; she joyed with the joy of the creator who sees his idea incarnate
before him.

A striking figure, Miss Cursiter. Tall, academic and austere; a keen
eagle head crowned with a mass of iron-grey hair; grey-black eyes burning
under a brow of ashen grey; an intelligence fervent with fire of the
enthusiast, cold with the renunciant's frost. Such was Miss Cursiter. She
was in splendid force to-day, grappling like an athlete with her enormous
theme--"The Educational Advantages of General Culture." She delivered her
address with an utterance rapid but distinct, keeping one eye on the
reporter and the other on Miss Rhoda Vivian, M.A.

She might well look to Rhoda Vivian. If she had needed a foil for her own
commanding personality, she had found it there. But the new Classical
Mistress was something more than Miss Cursiter's complement. Nature,
usually so economical, not to say parsimonious, seemed to have made her
for her own delight, in a fit of reckless extravagance. She had given her
a brilliant and efficient mind in a still more brilliant and efficient
body, clothed her in all the colours of life; made her a creature of
ardent and elemental beauty. Rhoda Vivian had brown hair with sparkles of
gold in it and flakes of red fire; her eyes were liquid grey, the grey of
water; her lips were full, and they pouted a little proudly; it was the
pride of life. And she had other gifts which did not yet appear at St.
Sidwell's. There was something about her still plastic and unformed; you
could not say whether it was the youth of genius, or only the genius of
youth. But at three-and-twenty she had chosen her path, and gone far on
it, and it had been honours all the way. She went up and down at St.
Sidwell's, adored and unadoring, kindling the fire of a secret worship.
In any other place, with any other woman at the head of it, such a vivid
individuality might have proved fatal to her progress. But Miss Cursiter
was too original herself not to perceive the fine uses of originality.
All her hopes for the future were centred in Rhoda Vivian. She looked
below that brilliant surface and saw in her the ideal leader of young
womanhood. Rhoda was a force that could strike fire from a stone; what
she wanted she was certain to get; she seemed to compel work from the
laziest and intelligence from the dullest by the mere word of her will.
What was more, her n