r 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