Were they really, as Bastian Cautley put it, so engrossed in producing a new type that they had lost sight of the individual?  Was the system so far in accordance with Nature that it was careless of the single life?  Which was the only life open to most of them, poor things.

And she had blundered more grossly than the system itself.  What, after all, had she done for that innocent whom she had made her friend?  She had taken everything from her.  She had promised to keep her place for her at St. Sidwell’s and was monopolising it herself.  Worse than that, she had given her a friend with one hand and snatched him from her with the other. (If you came to think of it, it was hard that she who had so much already could have Bastian Cautley too, any day, to play with, or to keep—­for her very own.  There was not a bit of him that could by any possibility belong to Miss Quincey.) She had tried to stand between her and her Fate, and she had become her Fate.  Worse than all, she had kept from her the knowledge of the truth—­the truth that might have cured her.  Of course she had done that out of consideration for Bastian Cautley.

There it seemed that Rhoda’s regard for his feelings ended.  Though she admitted ten times over that he was right, she was by no means more disposed to come to an understanding with him on that account.  On the contrary, when she saw him the very next evening (poor Bastian had chosen his moment indiscreetly) she endeavoured to repair her blunders by visiting them on his irreproachable head, dealing to him a certain painful, but not wholly unexpected back-hander in the face.

She had done all she could for Miss Quincey.  At any rate, she said to herself, she had spared her the final blow.

CHAPTER IX

Through the Stethoscope

One morning the Mad Hatter was madder than ever.  It was impossible to hold her attention.  The black eyes blazed as they wandered, the paralytic pencil was hot in her burning fingers.  When she laid it down towards the end of the morning and rested her head on her hands, Miss Quincey had not the heart to urge her to the loathsome toil.  She let her talk.

“Miss Quincey,” said the Mad Hatter in a solemn whisper, “I’m going to tell you a secret.  Do you see her?” She indicated Miss Rhoda Vivian with the point of her pencil.

It was evident that Laura Lazarus did not adore the Classical Mistress, and Rhoda, sick of her worshippers, had found this attitude refreshing.  Even now she bestowed a smile and a nod on the Mad Hatter that would have kept any other St. Sidwellite in a fortnight’s ecstasy.

“Laura, that is not the way to speak of your teachers.”

The child raised the Semitic arch of her eye-brows.  Her face belonged to the type formed from all eternity for the expression of contempt.